CJK characters
Chinese is written almost exclusively in Chinese characters. It requires over 3,000 characters for general literacy, but up to 40,000 characters for reasonably complete coverage. Japanese uses fewer characters — general literacy in Japanese can be expected with 1,945 characters. The use of Chinese characters in Korea is becoming increasingly rare, although idiosyncratic use of Chinese characters in proper names requires knowledge (and therefore availability) of many more characters. However, even today, students in South Korea are taught 1,800 characters.
Table of General Standard Chinese Characters
The Table of General Standard Chinese Characters () is a standard list of 8,105 Chinese characters. Of these, 6,500 are designated as common, a reduction from the 7,000 in the earlier "List of Commonly Used Characters in Modern Chinese".