The Character Catalogue uses animations and interactive links to show how characters are constructed from basic components. Students of Chinese can use it to explore character structure and see connections between character forms, sounds and meanings.

The Catalogue is not intended to be used as a dictionary. The readings, meanings and word usage examples given for each character are indicative and not necessarily complete. The focus is on "cracking the code" of the character-based writing system, not on teaching specific characters or words.