1. An improved method of recognizing descriptive features of characters, which have been scanned with a plurality of sensor cells, from binary representation thereof stored in a memory means, and tracing around the stored character representations, comprising the steps of (a) deriving initial features of a character such as circumference count prior to tracing around the character; (b) generating a single boundary trace on the boundary of the character to locate character features; (c) defining the contours of the character without regard to size of the character based upon the character shape and features derived during the boundary trace; (d) Weighting the derived features; and (e) generating a character code based upon the weighted features of the character.