The paper describes ways to recognize written signs when the nature of the source is absolutely unclear and the seemingly obvious possibilities for solving the problem are not clear as well. The article deals with methods of recognition of binary images in order to compare them and highlight the best. The images of documents are obtained with the help of a camera. The quality is low. The images of the collection were segmented and passed binaryization. A control sample was selected to test the recognition methods from the resulting collection. The paper describes the method of comparing images, their advantages and disadvantages when recognizing handwritten shorthand characters. The results obtained by comparing the characters of the control sample allowed determining the best method “method of comparison of forms”.