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| In 2013, 184,000 books were published in the UK |
Yesterday was International Literacy Day which has been held on September 8 since 1966.
1. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “literacy” was not used until 1886, though “illiteracy” had been around since 1660.
2. Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary Of The English Language has an entry for “illiterate” but none for “literate”.
3. According to Unesco, there are 757 million illiterate adults in the world.
4. In Yemen, 85.1 per cent of adult males are literate but only 55 per cent of females. This is the world’s highest male-female discrepancy rate.
5. … but in Lesotho, 88.3 per cent of women can read and write but only 70.1 per cent of men.
6. According to the CIA World Factbook, Niger has the lowest adult literacy rate at only 19.1 per cent.
7. “Literacy” is the ability to read and write. The word for the inability only to write is dysgraphia or agraphia.
8. “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man” (Francis Bacon).
9. According to a World Culture Source survey, people in the UK spend an average 5.3 hours a week reading and 18 hours watching television.
10. In 2013, 184,000 books were published in the UK. That’s one every three minutes.
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