Tiểu nhi kinh có 36 chữ cái, 4 trong số đó được sử dụng để thể hiện các nguyên âm. 36 chữ cái bao gồm 28 chữ cái mượn từ tiếng Ả Rập, 4 chữ cái mượn từ tiếng Ba Tư cùng với 2 chữ cái được sửa đổi và 4 chữ cái thêm duy nhất cho Tiểu nhi kinh.

Chữ đầu và phụ âm

Kết thúc và nguyên âm

• Because there is a problem in the synthesis of the diacritical mark, and substitute the ۟ in ْ.

Vowels in Arabic and Persian loans follow their respective orthographies, namely, only the long vowels are represented and the short vowels are omitted.Although the sukuun () can be omitted when representing Arabic and Persian loans, it cannot be omitted when representing Chinese. The exception being that of oft-used monosyllabic words which can have the sukuun omitted from writing. For example, when emphasised, "的" and "和" are written as (دِ‎) and (حـَ‎); when unemphasised, they can be written with the sukuuns as (دْ‎) and (حـْ‎), or without the sukuuns as (د‎) and (حـ‎).Similarly, the sukuun can also sometimes represent the Chinese -[ŋ] final instead of (ـݣ‎). This is sometimes replaced by the fatHatan (), the kasratan (), or the dammatan ().In polysyllabic words, the final 'alif (ـا‎) that represents the long vowel -ā can be omitted and replaced by a fatHah () representing the short vowel -ă.Xiao'erjing is similar to Hanyu Pinyin in the respect that words are written as one, while a space is inserted between words.When representing Chinese words, the shaddah sign represents a doubling of the entire syllable on which it rests. It has the same function as the Chinese iteration mark "々".Arabic punctuation marks can be used with Xiao'erjing as can Chinese punctuation marks, they can also be mixed (Chinese pauses and periods with Arabic commas and quotation marks).