1. An address recognition apparatus for recognizing an address written on a paper sheet, comprising: character recognizing means for recognizing a word string containing an address word string written on the paper sheet in the unit of character; word extracting means for extracting characters recognized by said character recognizing means in the unit of word; an address word string dictionary for storing a plurality of first word strings each constructing an address in which a word arrangement order is determined; and address word string recognizing means for collating a second word string including a plurality of words extracted by said word extracting means and the first various word strings in said address word string dictionary, determining words of the second word string respectively corresponding to. the words of the first word string based on similarities between the words of the first word string and the words of the second word string, making evaluation for each of the first word strings based on the number of words between the words of the second word string thus determined and the similarities between the words of the first word string and the words of the second word string determined, and recognizing one of the first word strings as the address word string.