1. Apparatus for recognizing a string of characters of hand written text in an image loaded in a computing system, the apparatus comprising: holistic recognition means for recognizing the string of characters as a whole based on comparison to prototype features for words in a stored lexicon and generating a first answer list and a segmentation list, the first answer list consisting of a plurality of recognition answers for the whole string of characters in the image, the segmentation list consisting of segmentation information separating the character features making up each character in the plurality of answers in the first answer list; analytical recognition means for receiving the segmentation list and recognizing a plurality of characters individually based on the segmentation information in the segmentation list and generating a second answer list for the string of characters in the image; and means for comparing the first answer list and the second answer list to determine a best recognition answer for the string of characters.