Papers in this report were presented at a conference on text characteristics, convened as part of the Learning from Text Project. The foreword describes the University of California and California State University Joint Projects Steering Committee project to determine the relationship between ability to learn from text and academic achievement, and gives an overview of the conference. This is followed by opening remarks by the co-chair of the Joint Projects Steering Committee. The major portion of the report consists of articles that discuss the following: (1) a preliminary collateral research report on the Learning from Text Project, (2) the impact of training in underlining on course achievement, (3) investigation of matrix groupings of student/text interaction based on extraneous underlinings, (4) the effect of ethnicity and socioeconomic status on college student achievement when combined with other predictive factors, (5) adjunct questions and text learning in college biology, (6) the effects of cognitive mapping on reading comprehension and written protocols, (7) direct instruction in metacognitive strategies, (8) a summer workshop for learning from text, (9) friendly texts, (10) a text evaluation checklist, (11) text properties that can inhibit the growth of meaning, (12) a workshop on application of criteria for evaluating texts, (13) application of criteria for evaluating texts, (14) learning assistance centers and the testing project at University of California at Los Angeles, and (15) the effects of two types of learning from text guides on the comprehension of psychology texts among college freshmen. (HTH)