1. A method for designating a recognition mode in a hand-written character/graphic recognizer for recognizing a character/graphic in a character recognition mode or a graphic recognition mode designated in accordance with stroke information supplied from input means which samples a hand-written character/graphic and converts it to the stroke information, and converting the recognized character/graphic to a charater/graphic code, said method comprising the steps of: extracting a characteristic value of the character/graphic from the stroke information supplied from said input means, said characteristic value being the stroke length determined from coordinates of the stroke included in the stroke information; discriminating between character information and graphic information based on the extracted characteristic value each time each stroke information is supplied from said input means; and designating one of the character recognition mode and the graphic recognition mode in accordance with the result of said discrimination.