18. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10 , wherein a distance between the reference support lines is equal to an expected height of a character of the handwritten input.
10. A non-transitory storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by a computing system, cause the computing system to perform operations for identifying characters in a handwritten input on a touch-sensitive device, the operations comprising: receiving a handwritten user input via the touch-sensitive device; identifying a set of candidate characters based on the handwritten user input; estimating candidate support lines for each of the candidate characters; associating reference support lines for each candidate character; for each candidate character, measuring a deviation between the estimated support lines and reference support lines to determine one or more deviations from an expectation; ranking each candidate character based on a total deviation measurement for each candidate character; and identifying a best-ranked candidate character based at least in part on a smallest total deviation measurement.