An image processing apparatus comprises: a character area extractor to extract a character area from image information which is derived by reading an original document by an image scanner ; a position/size information memory to derive position information and size information of the image information in the character area extracted by the extractor; a comparator to compare the position and size information which are stored in the memory with predetermined standard information ; and a recognizer to decide a recognition character on the basis of a comparison result obtained by the comparator. The predetermined standard information indicates a ratio in the extracted character area. In the case of correcting the recognition character, the predetermined standard information is updated to a value which is compared by the comparator.