A word segmentation method for segmenting a text line into word segments, which is particularly advantageous for processing italic text but can also be used for regular text. A horizontal center zone of the text line, corresponding to the vertical center parts of the characters, is used to generate a center-zone-only vertical projection profile. The center zone is determined using a horizontal projection profile, by locating the two major peaks of that profile and defining the two major peak positions as the upper and lower boundaries of the center zone. Spacing segments (white gaps) in the vertical projection profile are identified, and classified into two classes, namely character spacing (gap between characters with a word) and word spacing (gap between words). The word spacings are used to segment the text line into word segments.