17. The system of claim 13 , wherein the word patterns comprise letters from Chinese pinyin characters.
13. A shorthand symbol system for recognizing words, comprising: a graphical keyboard layout for accepting a stroke as an input, wherein the keyboard layout contains a set of characters forming elements in the word without a temporary target element being placed adjacent to a current stroke location; a storage for storing word patterns of a plurality of paths, wherein each path connects a set of letters received from the graphical keyboard layout; a pattern recognition engine that recognizes a word pattern by processing the stroke using a combination of a plurality of channels, each channel selectively processing, in parallel, a different aspect of the stroke in relation to the plurality of the paths on the graphical keyboard layout and producing an output representing a probability estimate for a candidate word, one channel of the plurality of channels processing a location-based similarity probability estimate, another channel of the plurality of channels processing a shape-based similarity probability estimate, still another channel of the plurality of channels processing a path-based similarity probability estimate, and yet another channel of the plurality of channels processing a language context-based similarity probability estimate; and a computer for producing a probability estimate of a candidate word, wherein the computer produces the probability estimate of the candidate word by first serially applying the output of each channel of the plurality of channels alone and separately, and if a recognized word cannot be identified from the output of any one channel, then the computer mathematically integrates outputs of at least two channels of the plurality of channels to produce an integrated probability estimate of the candidate word.