It arranges 12,158 character entries under 542 radicals, which differ somewhat from the original 540 in the Shuowen Jiezi.
Each character entry gives a fanqie pronunciation gloss and a definition, with occasional annotation.
It is the first major extant dictionary in the four centuries since the completion of Shuowen and records thousands of new characters that had been introduced into the language in the interim.
For instance, the Yupian records that wàn (traditional 萬, "ten thousand, myriad") had a popular form of (simplified 万), which is much easier to write with three strokes versus thirteen.
In 1013, Song dynasty scholar Chen Pengnian (陳彭年; Ch'en P'eng-nien) published a revised Daguang yihui Yupian (大廣益會玉篇; "Expanded and enlarged Jade Chapters").