PURPOSE: To improve the recognition rate by introducing a small-scale neural network for stroke recognition to an online character recognition device.

CONSTITUTION: A stroke data processing part 11 is constituted mainly of a neural network 11, and handwriting data inputted from a tablet 10 is matched with contents of a character feature description dictionary 13, where standard patterns of characters are registered, by the result obtained in this processing part 11 and handwriting data of a one-character portion. In the case of the stroke with the neural network 17 unlearned, output information of the neural network for input of this stroke is given to the character feature description dictionary 13.