1. A hand-held electronic device for use in accessing and displaying textual information, comprising: a display for displaying information to a user; a processor; a memory; at least one word dictionary table stored in the memory, the at least one word dictionary table comprising a first list of unique words that are contained in the textual information, and further comprising a set of word identification tokens, each word identification token representing one of the unique words in the first list; and at least one phrase dictionary table stored in the memory, the at least one phrase dictionary table comprising a second list of word identification token groups, each word identification token group representing a phrase that is contained in the textual information, and further comprising a set of phrase identification tokens, each phrase identification token representing one of the phrases in the textual information; whereby a data access routine stored in the memory and executable by the processor to receive an input from the user may, in response to the input, display a portion of the textual information stored in the memory.