For adults, written spelling is generally superior to oral spelling. To determine whether thesame holds true for children in kindergarten through second grade, we compared children'sability to spell real words (Experiment 1) and nonsense words (Experiment 2) orally and inwriting. Building on the work of Tangel and Blachman (1992, 1995) and others, we developed areliable system to assess the overall quality of the children's spellings. We also examinedthe phonological and orthographic legality of the spellings. By first and second grade, writtenspellings were superior to oral spellings in both overall quality and representation ofphonological form. This held true for both words and nonwords. The results suggest thatchildren, like adults, more accurately analyze the linguistic structure of a spoken item when theycan represent the results in a lasting, visible form than when they cannot.