An optical character reading system in which each character pattern is electronically scanned several times while a manually held scanner is moved over the character pattern. The recognition results from each scan are subjected to a selection process and a final signal recognition result is generated in which noise and inaccurate recognition results have been substantially eliminated. Data from a character scanner is classified into several different data types from which partial characteristics are determined. Signals representing the partial characteristics operate a memory circuit which produces the final recognition signal.