Techniques are disclosed for generating an electronic shopping list based on a digital photograph of a handwritten shopping list. The techniques include obtaining a digital photograph of a handwritten shopping list and identifying a handwritten text portion in the digital photograph. The techniques further include determining a set of candidate items corresponding to the handwritten text portion, each candidate item of the set of candidate items representing a different item that may have written in the handwritten text portion of the handwritten shopping list and being indicative of a product sold by a retailer. The techniques further include selecting one of the set of candidate items for inclusion in the electronic shopping list. The techniques can be performed by a mobile computing device or by a shopping list server.