A character input device comprises: a pen track input section (11) that inputs a pen track in a character entry region (11a); a character recognition section (12) that recognises the character sequence constituted by a plurality of characters from the pen track that was input in the same region; a character display section (14) that displays the recognised character sequence; and a control section (13) that performs control during display or during editing of the character sequence using the character display section (14), in accordance with the number of characters of the recognised character sequence.