title_body: Organizing a lexicon in a logographic writing system A little background before my question: I am an amateur in mid-development of a logographic writing system, not necessarily a whole language with phonetics. As I develop, I don't so much care about grammar, at least not yet. The language is heavily context-based, it requires you to have foreknowledge of the concepts it conveys, and ideas portrayed in the writing system are to be implied by the reader. It's memory-intensive, so you can't quite analyze it like, say, English, and determine its meaning through some roots or affixes.
  In a nutshell, virtually no grammar. No specific way to order your ideas, just implied context.  
  
  Ideas are distinguished by category: nouns, verbs, adjectives. (That should be used as a dominant identifier for the question yet to be asked)  
  
  Okay, that'll probably do it for background. My question is this: Is there an advantageous method to sort and organize characters of a logographic system, specifically for dictionary look-up? (Given the properties I mentioned above.)  
  
  My current method is just sorting by the kinds of ideas. Ex.: In the verb category, I may sort verbs whether they describe positional things, e.g., to be underneath, or motional things, e.g., to run, etc. For nouns, a similar system may be employed (haven't reached this point yet), as well as for adjectives.  
  
  However, I imagine that such an approach would/could create confusion. (Is an ice cream cake a cake or an ice cream? Why?)  
  
  Certainly, there must be other options I'm not seeing. This question, for example, seems to brush the idea just a smidgen, but it is centered largely on computer programs for organization. For this, I should specify that I am working entirely on-paper. Computerization is not an option quite yet. I am strictly searching for methods for organizing a kind of lexicon, entries similar to those arrayed in an English dictionary.
upvoted_answer: Having a dictionary ordered by theme or idea is a good thing and it can carry you a long way in the design of your writing system.
  
  For a more systematic approach, you need a way to order your logograms. Chinese sorting may be an inspiration for you. They identify a "radical" in each character, and than order by radical + number and order of additional strokes. The approach has the advantage that simpler characters (with fewer strokes, and probably more frequent usage) come before more complex ones.