For establishing quick, practical and reliable criteria for effective control of field compaction, prediction of compaction parameters on the basis of laboratory tests—which are simple and less time consuming—are desirable. Through a review and analysis of reported literature on compaction characteristics of fine grained soils, it is shown that toughness limit-the water content at which soil state changes from a virtually non workable adhesive-plastic region to a workable tough-plastic region-bears a good correlation with optimum moisture content. The accuracy of optimum moisture content prediction is seen to improve when different correlation equations are used for low-to-medium plastic and highly plastic soils. At all energy levels studied, maximum dry unit weight is found to bear a good correlation with the dry unit weight at toughness limit water content. The range of workable or tough-plastic region has been identified as nearly 0.42 times the conventional plastic region as proposed by Atterberg. Thus the study also emphasises the combined influence of liquid limit and plastic limit on compaction parameters of fine grained soils at any rational compactive effort.