The present invention provides a method of identifying a string formed
from a number of hand-written characters, such as hand-written words. In
order to achieve this, the method operates to determine character
probabilities for each character in the string, as well as to determine
the probability of the string corresponding to a predetermined form of
template. In this regard, each template represents a respective
combination of character types. The template and character probabilities
are then combined to determine string probabilities, with the character
string being identified in accordance with the determined string
probabilities.