Abstract
Three correlation matrices of readability variables were factor analyzed and the results compared to factor analyses of earlier matrices and to each other. The three new analyses, based upon a wide variety of written materials and of readability index variables, produced data highly consistent with the earlier studies. The same two components, word difficulty and sentence difficulty, accounted for more than half the variance in each analysis. In one of the new analyses for which data are reported, however, as well as one of the previous studies, the relative contribution of the two factors was reversed. Also the percentage of total variance accounted for varied over a considerable range. Hypotheses were offered to account for the results and some implications for research were identified.