Abstract: A character recognition system is disclosed utilizing a dead-band correlator for providing recognition of printed typestyles having horizontal and vertical stroke width variations without impairing the resolution required for character feature analysis. The system provides fewer character-to-mask registration errors, simultaneous computation of correlation scores of registration positions of masks with respect to the unknown character to compensate for additional registration errors, improved reject and substitution rates by utilizing unique threshold and separation requirements for masks, lower error rates by using small and large noise filtering and combining dual level acceptance criteria used in conjunction with re-try methods, stroke width normalization to aid in recognition of characters with badly degraded stroke widths, and selection of specific mask sets during multiple typestyle recognition processing than has previously been possible.