CHARACTER RECOGNIZING METHOD

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a method flexibly recognizing characters on an optimum condition by means of a single character recognition device with respect to even various characters formed in a card. SOLUTION: A character is recognized by controlling a carrying means 2 carrying the card to a prescribed reading position, an illuminating means 3 illuminating the character and a picture processing means 5 picture-processing picture data obtained by a character read by a reading means 4 by a recognizing method suited to the character on the card, based on initializing data including information on the division of a character forming method, a character attribute and character arrangement which are fixed in a series of card group to be recognizing objects. The character forming division is the division of printing character such as an embossed character, a marking character, an OCR character, the character attribute is a lettering, the size and color of the character, etc., and the arrangement of the character is the start position of the character, character pitch, intervals between characters, the total number of characters, the ending position of the character, etc.