A method of identifying a string formed from a number of hand-written characters is disclosed. The method starts by determining character probabilities for each hand-written character in the string. Each character probability represents the likelihood of the respective hand-written character being a respective one of a number of predetermined characters. Next, template probabilities for the string are determined. Each template probability represents the likelihood of the string corresponding to a respective one of a number of templates. Each template represents a respective combination of character types. The step of determining the template probabilities for the string includes the sub-steps of determining the number of characters in the string, selecting templates having an identical number of characters, and obtaining a template probability for each selected template.