This volume reports the results of a series of investigations of the properties of writing tasks, their authors' intentions, and the responses that these tasks evoked in student-writers and teacher-raters. The volume explains how both student-writers and teacher-raters, in their reading of the same topic/text, can arrive at different meanings. The investigations undertaken led the authors to make a number of recommendations about selecting subjects, specifying audience and mode, formulating instructions, and wording the topic. These recommendations are presented in non-technical language in a comprehensive set of Guidelines for Designing Topics for Writing Assessments.