PURPOSE: To reduce selecting operation or reinput operation and to efficiently input hand-written character.

CONSTITUTION: This on-line hand-written character recognizing device is provided with a character input part 12 for segmenting the character pattern of each character from a hand-written pattern inputted from an input part 11a of a coordinate input device 11, a character recognizing part 13 for executing the recognizing processing of the character pattern segmented by the input part 12 and finding out a recognition candidate character to which candidate order is added, a chained information retrieving part 15 for changing the order of recognition candidate characters of a character to be recognized based upon chain information indicating easiness of chaining the character to be recognized which is stored in a chain information dictionary 16 to preceding and succeeding characters continued to the object, and a display control part 17 for displaying the recognition candidate characters on a display part 11b in the device 11 in accordance with the order changed by the retrieving part 15. If no recognition candidate character is obtained by character recognition, the retrieving part 15 estimates and finds out a recognition candidate character based upon the chain information corresponding to the character to be recognized.