In East Asian languages, a dictionary form for Han (Chinese) characters has developed, called "Kan-wa jiten" (literally 'Han-Japanese dictionary') in Japanese and "Okpyeon" ('Jewel Book') in Korean. Each entry has one Chinese character with information about stroke count and order, readings (pronunciations), and a list of words using that character.

These characters are not arbitrary; they are composed of simpler characters, one of which is called the "radical", which indicates its category. The ordering of the characters in the dictionary is by radical, in order of the number of strokes in the radical. Characters using that radical are then ordered by the number of strokes added to the radical. To fit more strokes in a character, radicals can come in simplified variants, which have to be learned; for example, the character for "dog" is altered when it is used as the radical of the character for "cat".

Character dictionaries
Bilingual dictionaries
Pronunciation key
Variations between dictionaries