The present experiment was designed to investigate the differences in search efficiency among 9 patterns of arrangement of Chinese characters, varying with respect to size and dimension of the character-block. One hundred and thirty-five university women served assubjects and the mairi apparatus included a display window, two keyboards, and two electrical stop-clocks. Each S was instructed to search the display screen, in front of her,for one predetermined character on each trial. The time interval between the display ofthe characters on the screen and the pressing of keys to indicate the correct location of the chosen character was recorded as the main measure of search efficiency. It was found that, among the 9 patterns used, the efficiency was highest for the 6x0 arrangement 6 characters in a row in each block), lowest for the 2x2 arrangement, with the other 7 patterns (i.e., all characters in one row, 2x0, 3x0, 4x0, 3x2, 2x3, and 3x3) inbetween. The reason for the 6x0 arrangement to be most efficient is twofold: (1) The number of characters per block is close to the average human span of attention or comprehension, and (2) the characters in each block are arranged in an one-dimensional format rather than in a two-dimensional format which is more time-consuming'in scanning. The present results may be useful in designing a Chinese input system for digital computer in which character searching is a necessary step.