Abstract: Recognition of characters, particularly handwritten characters, is facilitated by examining a character for holes (i.e. non-character portions enclosed by character portions), split characters (i.e. disconnected character segments), overhangs and underhangs (i.e. extensions of character segments to the left or right of other segments). In a specific embodiment a character to be recognized is quantized into a grid of vertical column and horizontal rows and then shifted in parallel by column, serially by row through a recognition mask which examines one row at a time. Results of the examination may be used either as positive character recognition or as pre-recognition exclusionary information to resolve possible ambiguities in conventional recognition processes.