Chinese Dictionary

English dictionaries entries are organized in alphabetical order. (A,B,C...Z). How do you organize Chinese characters?

They are organized by their radicals (root word equivalent in alphabet based scripts).

In the turn the order of the radicals are fixed by tradition.  Under each radical, then entries are ordered by the increasing number of strokes used to write the character less that of the radical.  Again for the same number of strokes, their order is determined by tradition.  Before even the publication of the first English dictionary, the Chinese had their dictionary made and standardized thousands of years ago, when the First Emperor unified China and the Chinese script standardized to the official script of the Chin State.  There is less updating of Chinese characters themselves than the Western counterparts.  New characters are invented when there is an absolute must. For example, names of elements.  Just add the "metal" radical to another character that sounds closest to the pronunciation of the discovered element.

You may be puzzled how Chinese cope with modern inventions and things that do not exist in the past.  This easily solved.  For example, "electricity" is "lightning" which is very apt because of its nature.  Telephone is electric talk, wires are electric strings, computers are electric brains and so on.  Get the idea?  The size of the dictionary grow not because of new characters being formed but the combinations of the characters put together.  Of course some terms change their meanings because of modernity and may cause confusion by themselves.  For example, "hand held" can mean to be a cell/mobile phone.  The context will reveal the correct meaning.  If you think it can be confusing and Chinese is cumbersome because of this, then you are mistaken.  All languages have ambiguity and this makes a living language interesting.  Even in English, without proper context, the following two sentences are ambiguous,

The Queen threw a ball.

Singapore is a fine city.