A method and apparatus for recognizing alphanumeric characters in which a set of unknown characters is received from an imaging system and a set of known characters from a storage device. A first set of pairs of characters is created from the set of unknown characters (302) and a second set of pairs of characters is created from the set of known characters (304). A matrix is generated having a plurality of cells, each cell containing a pair of characters. The matrix is interrogated with the first set to generate a first result, and the matrix is interrogated with the second set to generate a second result (302, 304). The first result is compared with the second result (306). A first predetermined action is taken if the first result matches the second result, while a second predetermined action is taken if the first result does not match the second result (308).