The dictionary title combines zì 字 "character; script; writing; graph; word" and huì 彙 "gather together; assemble; collection; list".

In modern Chinese usage, zìhuì 字匯 or 字彙 means "glossary; wordbook; lexicon; dictionary; vocabulary; (computing) character set" (Wenlin 2016).

For instance, the "Sequences of Strokes" shows the correct stroke order, which is useful for students, "Ancient Forms" uses early Chinese script styles to explain the six Chinese character categories, and "Index of Difficult Characters" lists graphs whose radicals were difficult to identify.

The main body of the Zihui dictionary is divided into 12 volumes (2-13) called ji (集, collections) and numbered according to the twelve Earthly Branches.

[7] Mei Yingzuo made his dictionary more easily accessible to the general literate public by using the current regular script form of characters.

Beginning with the Shuowen jiezi, earlier Chinese dictionaries were arranged according to radicals written in the obsolete seal script.

[7] The best-known lexicographical advances in Mei Yingzuo's Zihui are reducing the unwieldy Shuowen Jiezi 540-radical system for collating Chinese characters into the more logical 214-radical system, and arranging graphs belonging to a single radical according to the number of residual strokes, making finding character entries a relatively simple matter.

The most important of the works based on the Zihui model was undoubtedly the 1716 Kangxi Zidian, which soon became the standard dictionary of Chinese characters, and continues to be used widely today.

[11] The best-known lexicographical advances in the Zihui are reducing the unwieldy Shuowen Jiezi 540-radical system for collating Chinese characters into the more logical 214-radical system, and arranging graphs belonging to a single radical according to the number of residual strokes, making finding character entries a relatively simple matter.

The Chinese scholar Zou Feng (邹酆)[12] lists four major lexicographical format innovations that Mei Yingzuo established in the Zihui, and which have been used in many dictionaries up to the present day (1983).