The effects of different positions of category labels on grouped words were investigated. In one condition, no category label was given. In the other three conditions, the category label was given after, or before each group of words, or below each word. The results showed that category labels generally reduced recall of word and category. The worst performance was obtained when the category label was given after each group of words. These results have implications for experiments in which category labels are given with grouped words. Only grouping of the words sufficiently indicates to subjects the relevant categories. Moreover, these results suggest a re-examination of theories of free word recall which suppose that subjects first recall the category label before recalling the words.