A method and apparatus for character entry and more particularly Chinese character entry. The method improves the ease of entry for Chinese characters on a device that has a keypad arrangement of at least a 3×3 matrix (106). For example wireless communication devices such as radiotelephones have a keypad (108) for dialing phone numbers. Arranging the Chinese characters on the device display in a 3×3 matrix to match the at least 3×3 matrix of the keypad allows the user to quickly select from the pin yin list (104) the key on the keypad that corresponds to the desired character in the matching matrix.