1. A method of identifying a string formed from a number of hand-written characters, said method comprising the steps of: determining by a processor character probabilities for each hand-written character in the string, each character probability representing the likelihood of the respective hand-written character being a respective one of a number of predetermined characters; determining by the processor template probabilities for the string, each template probability representing the likelihood of the string corresponding to a respective one of a number of templates, each template representing a respective combination of character types, wherein the step of determining the template probabilities for the string comprises 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.