A study focused on how the writer's knowledge of the language and use of a prewriting strategy for planning ideas affect the quality and efficiency of the writing. Three hypotheses were developed about how knowledge and strategy might influence writing performance: (1) independence (predicts that knowledge and strategy will independently improve writing performance); (2) compensation (contends that content or knowledge and tactics or strategy are two paths leading to the same destination); and (3) enabling (postulates that knowledge and strategy interact, but not in a compensatory manner). College students were given writing problems (adapted from the Law School Admissions Test) that called for analytic thinking and informative writing. Judges then rated the documents for content quality and style quality. The conclusions of the analysis showed that: the results best conform to the independence hypothesis; outlining, but not clustering, is an effective prewriting strategy; and outlining improved the quality of written documents and enhanced the fluency of language production during drafting. (Eight figures and two tables are included, and 15 references are appended.) (MS)