There are two or three, similar schemes for alphabetizing Tibetan words. This dictionary has its entries ordered according to the most common Tibetan alphabetization scheme, which is used in the བོད་རྒྱ་ཚིག་མཛོད་ཆེན་མོ་ The Great Tibetan-Chinese Dictionary. That alphabetization scheme has six levels of ordering the Tibetan words. In order from most to least significant they are as follows.
1) Head words are alphabetized on the basis of their མིང་གཞི་ “name-base” consonants. Alphabetization proceeds in the order of the Tibetan syllables: ཀ་ཁ་ག་ང་ཅ་ཆ་ཇ་ཉ་ཏ་ཐ་ད་ན་པ་ཕ་བ་མ་ཙ་ཚ་ཛ་ཝ་ཞ་ཟ་འ་ཡ་ར་ལ་ཤ་ས་ཧ་ཨ།
2) Next, for a given Tibetan syllable, words using just the bare syllable are presented first, followed by words consisting of the syllable plus a vowel sign. This latter order is in the normal order of the four vowel signs of the Tibetan language: ི ུ ེ ོ (which roughly correspond to the English vowels i u e o respectively). As each vowel sign is presented, any words with suffices are also presented according to the normal, syllabic order of the suffix.
3) Next, the syllable with a sub-scribed letter is presented. The sub-scribed letters are presented in normal syllabic order, and then in accordance with #2.
4) Next, the syllable with a prefix letter is presented. The prefixes are presented in normal syllabic order, and then in accordance with number #2 and #3.
5) Next, the syllable with a superscribed head-letter is presented. The superscribed letters are presented in the normal syllabic order, and then in accordance with #2 to #4.
6) Sanskrit transliterated into Tibetan is alphabetized according to the order of Tibetan syllables as mentioned in #1 to #5 but is also done in the left to right fashion of Sanskrit within a word where necessary. Sanskrit vowels, which include a subscribed ཨ་ཆུང་ achung, and so on are ordered after the end of a normal Tibetan sequence. Thus, the word ཀཱ་ will appear after ཀ་ However, the unusual letter combinations which do not appear in normal Tibetan writing, such as ཀྵ, are ordered as though they were normal Tibetan combinations. So, for instance, the word ཀྵེཏྲ་པཱ་ལ་ would appear in order after the words with ཀླ་ as their name-base and གྷ་ would appear in order after words with གླ་ as their name-base.