1. A word spotting method comprising: defining a word model having first parameters and second parameters; extracting writing segments generally comprising images of handwritten character strings from a received document image; adjusting the first parameters of the word model respective to the extracted writing segments without adjusting the second parameters of the word model; and performing word spotting on the received document image using the word model with the adjusted first parameters and the unadjusted second parameters to identify whether a handwritten word of interest is present in the received document image; wherein at least the extracting, the adjusting, and the performing of word spotting are performed by a computer.