A study of the holistic evaluation of writing compared holistic rating and the rating for "conformity to correct prose" technique, a technique based on error counting, of five essays representing five ability levels. The essays were produced in a college English-as-a-Second-Language program. The two scoring methods produced the same ranking of essays. Other quantitative measures (number of error-free words in the original composition, number of words in the rewritten version, and errors in the original) yielded the same rank order. Further studies examining the factor of organization in holistic evaluation of compositions is recommended. The "conformity to correct prose" method of evaluation is seen as useful because it appears to be a sound technique and it produces, as a by-product, grammatically correct target versions of essays that can then be examined solely in terms of their organizational content. (MSE)