Summary.Reading errors were examined in 140 children ranging from 5 to 11 years in reading age. Intelligence, sex and social class were controlled within each reading age. Interjudge reliability on the ratings was quite high at 0.90, 0.95, 0.67 and 0.83 on graphophonic proximity, syntactic, semantic and phonemic similarity, respectively. The build‐up in sight vocabulary resulted in increases in graphophonic and phonemic similarity up to 8 years of reading age. There was also a change in reading style from a phonics to a more whole‐word style of reading. The more proficient readers appeared to process larger units of information which could account for systematic reductions in syntactic similarity. The reader at this level appears to be more eclectic and is capable of utilising all dimensions whenever necess