There are two main ways to navigate the dictionary, as well as two minor ones.
Firstly, the Browse sidebar allows the user to browse alphabetically by clicking on one of the letters in the Cicipu alphabet. This displays a list of all the words beginning with that letter. Due to the noun class system the initial letters of words are not evenly distributed; for example almost a third of the words in the dictionary begin with k.
Secondly, the search box can be used to search in any of the three languages. All search hits are displayed in a single list (for example searching for 'mar' would return maringi 'claperless bell', Hausa maraba 'welcome', and English 'marsh'.
As an additional feature, each entry also contains 'Next word' and 'Previous word' buttons which allow the user to move from word-to-word. For technical reasons it has been easier to order this list alphabetically by lexical root rather than word (this is not considered a serious flaw since anyone seeking a list ordered by word can simply use the alphabetic links on the sidebar).
Throughout the dictionary text in Cicipu appears in bold (e.g. cinda), English in plain font (e.g. wait), and Hausa in purple italics (e.g. jira). Nouns are listed by the citation form (i.e. with the noun class prefix), usually in the singular; however some nouns (e.g. áayà 'beans') are almost always used in the singular, and so the plural is given as the main entry, with just a cross-reference provided under the singular (e.g. káayà 'bean'). Noun roots are not listed separately but can easily be derived from the singular and plural forms.
When trying to look up a word in Cicipu, bear in mind that some words begin with long consonants (e.g. zzá 'person' appears after zũwã 'roast') and that others contain long vowels (e.g. kàdáaná 'large brown hawk' appears before kàdámá 'word'). Words that begin with a phonemic glottal stop e.g. 'isanu 'stand up' are listed at the end of the alphabet under the glottal stop '.