Sliding input method and apparatus and terminal device

The invention discloses a sliding input method and apparatus and a terminal device. The method comprises: acquiring a sliding track input on a virtual keyboard by a user; determining activation keys on the sliding track, fault-tolerant activation keys on and outside the sliding track, and penalty values, wherein the activation keys include keys corresponding to key points and non-key points in the sliding track, the key points include a starting point, an inflection point and a terminal point, and the non-key points include through points; generating an activation key sequence corresponding to the sliding track according to the activation keys and the fault-tolerant activation keys; decoding the activation key sequence to obtain candidate Chinese characters or character strings; and displaying the candidate Chinese characters or character strings. According to the sliding input method and apparatus and the terminal device, the identification effect of sliding input can be effectively improved.