The strategies used by children in word recognition are examined. A critical review of some of the classical research which has influenced current thinking about how words are recognized is presented along with a discussion of some of the errors which can be found in these studies. A five-stage model of how beginning readers learn to recognize words is described as including unusual characteristics of words, word shape cues, phonics, context, and sight words. Contrasts are made among recent experimental findings concerning cues used in word recognition and some commonly held beliefs on the subject. Results of recent studies indicate that children prefer to use first letters, final letters, middle letters, and word shape (in that order of preference) as cues to word identification. Discrimination studies indicate that children select the easiest cue for word recognition and that initial training on a list of words with low discriminability which forces attention on all letters, in contrast to training on a word list of high discriminability, encourages the child to adopt a strategy which provides a better basis for transfer to learning new words. Although letter-name knowledge does not seem to have any beneficial effect on reading, there is evidence that letter-sound training does have a positive effect. A bibliography is included. (WB)