To provide a character input device/method which can easily input the characters to a character input panel and also can easily recognize these characters with improved handling facilitation secured for users.

The stroke groups forming characters are inputted to a digitizer 201a by means of a pen 201b. An input stroke group is designated by the pen 201b, and a CPU 203 decides the direction of the designated stroke group. Based on this decision result, a character input area is formed on a character input panel and this panel is displayed on the digitizer 201a.