1. A method of recognizing handwritten words, a word being formed by a plurality of characters that may touch or overlap each other, each character being formed by one or more strokes comprising the steps of: (a) initializing an index of a current segmentation point of a character; (b) considering a stroke of a handwritten character having a segmentation point and incrementing said index or terminating said method when no further strokes exist to be processed. (c) examining recognitions on stroke sequences ending at the segmentation point corresponding to said index; (d) grading the results of said examination of recognitions to rank potential character choices; and (e) repeating steps (b) through (d) until all strokes for characters comprising a word have been processed.