1. A word recognition method of performing recognition processing with respect to each word candidate obtained by reading characters in character information written in a reading material, comprising: a matching processing step of collating each word candidate with a plurality of words in a word dictionary and calculating, every word, a matching score indicative of a degree that each word candidate matches with a word; a character quality score calculating step of calculating a character quality score indicative of a degree that a character candidate constituting each word candidate matches with an arbitrary character; and a correcting step of correcting a matching score obtained at the matching processing step based on a character quality score acquired at the character quality score calculating step, wherein the correcting step includes processing by subtracting the character quality score obtained at the character quality score calculating step from the matching score acquired at the matching processing step.