The standard of personal literacy is: farmers know 1500 Chinese characters, and employees of enterprises and institutions and urban residents know 2000 Chinese characters; Can read simple and popular newspaper articles, keep simple accounts and write simple and practical articles.

Literacy is a Chinese word, which means to get rid of illiteracy. In the new century, the United Nations has redefined the standard of illiteracy and divided it into three categories: the first category, people who can't read and write, and illiterates in the traditional sense; The second category, people who can't recognize modern social symbols (that is, maps, graphs and other commonly used charts); The third category, people who can't learn, communicate and manage with computers. The latter two types are considered as "functional illiteracy". Although they have received basic literacy education, they have great difficulties in the social life with highly developed modern information dissemination.