line sync signal can be supplied to the counter 82 thus the counter 82 has the contents corresponding to the distance of the top position of the detected character pattern from the reference prosition when an end of character signal eoc is supplied to the flip flop 81 and reset the same the central position detecting circuit 83 determines the central position of the character pattern in guestion from the height data from the counter 82 and width data from the width data detector 75 the operation circuit 84 and pulse generator 85 constitute a normalization circuit for shifting the central position of the character pattern stored in the shift register 41 to a predetermined position in response to the output signal from the comparator 76 so that the central position of the character pattern corresponding to the character pattern data to be transferred to the identification circuit 60 is always set to a predetermined position the pulse generator 85 further supplies a trigger pulse to the identification circuit 60 after the generation of pulses corresponding in number to the extent of shift calculated by the operation circuit 84 in response to this trigger signal the identification circuit 60 is set to the initial state whereupon it supplies a shift clock pulse to a clock terminal of the shift register while fetching normalized character pattern data stored in.