Abstract: According to one aspect of the invention there is provided a method (20) and electronic device (1) for determining orientation and recognition of handwritten characters scribed on touchscreen (5). The method (20) includes receiving (22) the hand written character and then normalizing (23) the character to provide a scaled character that fits within a defined boundary. The scaled character comprises at least one line and a step of identifying (24) the lines of the scaled character as a vector is effected and thereafter a step of rotating (26) rotates the scaled character from an initial orientation to a final orientation through a plurality of discrete orientations. A step of calculating (27) then calculates, for each of the discrete orientations, magnitudes of co-ordinate components of each vector and then a summing step (28) then sums, for each of said discrete orientations, the co-ordinate components to provide a summed co-ordinate component for the scaled character at a corresponding discrete orientation.