A method for recognition of a handwritten character comprises the steps of determining a plurality of position features defining the handwritten character, and comparing the handwritten character to reference characters stored in a database in order to find the closest matching reference character. The step of comparing comprises the steps of computing a difference between one of the plurality of position features of the handwritten character and a corresponding position feature of one of the reference characters, determining, by lookup in a predefined table, a distance measure based on the computed difference and determining a distance measure for each of the plurality of position features of the handwritten character, and computing a cost function based on the determined distance measures. A device and a computer program for implementing the method are also described.