A study examined how pragmatic form influences evaluation of student essays in university placement testing. Specifically, the study documented how patterns in students' use of information (assumed to be either old, inferable, or new for readers) affected the holistic scores for quality given to the essays. Subjects, 99 randomly selected entering undergraduates, all native English speakers, wrote essays that responded to the same rhetorical demands--a transactional piece of prose explaining the writer's position on a current public issue. Each essay was ranked by two readers using a modified holistic scoring system. The use of categories from E. Prince's taxonomy allowed a cross-classification of 24 categories into which a piece of information could be placed. Results indicated that three kinds of social identities were salient in the placement-test situation: (1) that of the "test-taker," whose use of linguistic forms overtly appealed to the norms supposedly operating in the situation; (2) that of the "knowledgeable student," whose use of linguistic forms established credibility and appeal to literate traditions presumed shared with readers of the test; and (3) that of the "straightforwardly cooperative writer," whose use of linguistic forms established his or her personal sincerity and directness. If it is true that readers use linguistic forms simultaneously to construct message and writer, and that their evaluation of the former is better understood as a response to the latter, further research should pursue relations among other aspects of linguistic forms, social identity, and readers' evaluations. (Tables of data, sample essay topics marked according to Prince's taxonomy, and references are appended.) (NKA)