In general, the linguistic features examined by writing researchers fall into three large constructs: lexical, syntactic, and cohesion. Language features are also important elements of identifying discourse structures as well (i.e., claims, arguments, theses, and rhetorical moves), but the language structures used in these determinations may not be linguistic in nature per se and are not the focus of this overview. Instead, this review will focus on research that has examined links between writing quality/development and linguistic features as found in text, especially those features related to lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, and text cohesion. These differences will be covered in the discussion section of this paper.