The elastic T-stress has been found to be an important parameter in characterizing the very near tip elastic-plastic stress state under 2-D plane strain conditions (Larsson and Carlsson [1]; Bilby et al. [2]; Beteg6n and Hancock [3]; etc.). Several computational methods have been developed to evaluate the T-stress (Larsson and Carlsson [1]; Kfouri [4]; Sham [5]). However, none of these methods can be readily adapted to calculate the elastic T-stress in a surface-cracked plate (SCP), which is essentially 3-D in nature. In this paper, the line-spring method, which has proven effective in computing the stress intensity factor of SCPs, is used to evaluate the elastic T-stress along the crack front. SCPs with same length and width, but different crack geometries, from low aspect ratio (a/c=0.24) to high aspect ratio (a/c=0.70), under both remote tension and bending, are studied using the line-spring method. Detailed, threedimensional continuum finite element (FE) solutions of some 'extreme' cases, in terms of both aspect ratio and crack depth, under either remote tension or bending, are compared with the line-spring solutions. The line-spring solutions are in excellent agreement with the 3-D elastic FE solutions, but use 2 to 3 orders of magnitude less computational time and considerably less preparation and post-processing efforts. A concluding example demonstrates the utility of the T-stress in more accurately describing the crack front elastic-plastic field in a SCP at load levels up to moderate scale yielding.