Abstract: 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.