Abstract: A dictionary based post-processing technique for an on-line handwriting recognition system is described. An input word has all punctuation removed, and the word is checked against a word processing dictionary. If any word matches against the dictionary, it is verified as a valid word. If it does not verify, a stroke match function and a spell-aid dictionary are used to construct a list of possible words. In some cases, the list is appended with possible words based on changing the first character of the originally recognized word. A character-match score, a substitution score and a word length are assigned to the items on the list. A word hypothesis is constructed from the list with each such word being assigned a score. The word with the best score is chosen as the output word for the processor.