1. A non-transitory computer readable medium, storing executable instructions for recognizing a single stroke character, the executable instructions, comprising: a gesture input interface configured to convert input from a user into a trajectory representing a single stroke character; a normalization component configured to resample the trajectory to produce a resampled trajectory having a standard size; a reference point generator configured to define a standard number of substantially equidistant reference points on the resampled trajectory, each of the reference points having at least two associated coordinates; a plurality of class templates, each of the plurality of class templates representing an associated single stroke character class and comprising for each of a set of points corresponding to the standard number of points, a mean value for each of at least two coordinates corresponding to the at least two coordinates associated with the reference points, a variance value for each of the at least two coordinates, and a covariance between a first coordinate and a second coordinate of the at least two coordinates; and a covariance adjusted distance component configured to determine respective covariance adjusted distances between the mean values for the at least two coordinates of the set of points associated with each of the plurality of class templates and the reference points on the resampled trajectory.