This heartfelt comment comes from a well‐known researcher on children's writing, in his study of the language of primary‐school children. Rosen's comment identifies a central problem for all writers: the need to create an imaginary audience. This task is often difficult for any writer, but is perhaps especially so for children, since it requires of the writer the special effort of distancing oneself from the present context into a non‐existent yet imagined time and place. Such a transposition of self in time and space requires the writer to make an inferential leap between placing the words on the page and their ultimate reception thereafter at some unspecified time and place. Work with children's writing in the early grades suggests that the more that can be done to reduce this leap by providing specific cues to audience reception for children, the easier the task of placing words on the page might be.