To reduce the capacity of a dictionary and to improve the efficiency of dictionary editing operation by representing standard character patterns which are in the same shape, but different in stroke order with good efficiency.

A recognition dictionary 11 for character recognition is composed of a stroke shape dictionary 7 in which information regarding the shapes of strokes constituting characters is registered and a stroke order dictionary 8 in which information regarding the order of strokes constituting characters in shapes that the stroke shape information registered in the stroke shape dictionary 7 represents and their directions is registered by the characters by as many as the numbers of different strokes. When a recognition part 5 recognizes the input character pattern that coordinate data of an input handwritten character supplied from an input part 1 shows, standard character patterns as many as pieces of stroke order information on which the stroke order than stroke order information is reflected are constituted by a standard character pattern constitution part 6 by pieces of stroke shape information registered in the stroke shape dictionary 7 according to all pieces of stroke order information registered in the stroke order dictionary 8 as to the stroke shape information and the characters in the shape that the stroke shape information represents, so that the standard character patterns are used for recognition.