Abstract: A word to be recognized being spelt out by a user for determining a list of hypotheses from a vocabulary of a voice recognition system. Measures of distance for a similarity between the recognized sequence of letters and entries of the vocabulary of the voice recognition system are determined. One of the following measures is subsequently undertaken: if differences between a number of distance measurements determined are below a predeterminable first value, a request is made by the voice recognition system for the user to continue spelling out the word to be recognized. If a predeterminable measure of distance exceeds a predeterminable second value, a request is made by the voice recognition system for the user to repeat the spelling of the word to be recognized.