A study was undertaken to demonstrate that expository prose written in Indian English exhibits certain characteristics determined by the sociocultural conventions of writing in the Indian tradition. These features of Indian English texts are often judged to be inappropriate by native speakers of North American and British English, and mistakenly attributed to a lack of knowledge of the linguistic conventions of English on the part of the Indian English writer. The report discusses data drawn from newspapers, magazines, books, papers on literary criticism, and textbooks and papers on linguistics, and points out the need for developing awareness and appreciation of different conventions of writing in non-native forms of English. It is concluded that a lack of such awareness and appreciation will lead to failure in cross-cultural communication through the written mode in English. A 42-item bibliography is appended. (MSE)