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.
Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage
First, Lin breaks down all Chinese characters into 33 basic stroke formations, called the "letters of the Chinese Alphabet", arranged into ten groups suggested by the characters for numerals. For instance, the character for "liu" 六 "6" is the mnemonic basic for "letters" 亠 (60), 广 (61), 宀 (62), and 丶 (63). Second, Lin lists the "fifty radicals" (common among the traditional 214 Kangxi radicals) designated with letters A through D, as in 氵 (63A), 礻 (63B), 衤 (63C), and 戸 (63D). Third, characters that can be divided vertically into left and right components are called "split" (S), and those characters that cannot are called "non-split" (NS), thus 羊 and 義 are (NS) while 祥 and 佯 are (S).