illiteracy

plural illiteracies

1. uncountableThe inability to read and write.

   Illiteracy is widespread in certain areas of the country.

   2 more examples

   The heroines of these plays speak out against intraracial biases, stereotyping, lynchmobs, illiteracy, poverty, promiscuity, self-righteousness, verbally abusive men, rape, and miscegenation. […] Without warning the doctor, she chokes the life out of her child in order to keep him safe from white lynchmobs.

   1990, Elizabeth Brown-Guillory, “Preface”, in Wines in the Wilderness: Plays by African American Women from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present, New York, N.Y.: Praeger Publishers, →ISBN, page xiv

   While some local governments ignore the illiteracy problem, others are actively campaigning to teach people to read and write. In the villages of Xiping County in Henan Province in central China, students stop visitors and ask them to read a few characters on a blackboard. Any visitor who cannot read the characters is not allowed to enter the village. This means that illiterates are effectively grounded, and in frustration many have joined the special reading classes offered in each village. Now in Xiping County, according to local officials, only 1.7 percent of those between the ages of 20 and 40 are illiterate.

   1994 September 4, Sheryl WuDunn, “China's Rush to Riches”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 26 May 2015, Section 6, page 38

2. uncountableThe portion of a population unable to read and write, generally given as a percentage.
3. countableA word, phrase, or grammatical turn thought to be characteristic of an illiterate person.
4. broadlyuncountableUnlearnedness; the state of being ignorant or unlettered.