# Minimum and Maximum Width

Specify the MinWidth and the maximum allowable MaxWidth for the mark rectangle of any character, in pixels. The OCRMax tool uses these values to:

- Prevent a feature on the baseline that does not exceed the minimum width from being reported as a character.
- Split potential characters that exceed the maximum width into separate pieces for segmentation purposes.

Related to the static values for minimum and maximum width, the OCRMax tool can optionally consider the aspect ratio by dividing the height of the entire string by the width of the mark rectangle for the character under consideration. Characters whose aspect value is smaller than the value for CharacterMinAspect parameter are split into pieces that are not too wide. The default value of 0.8 configures the OCRMax tool to accept characters that are taller than they are wide, but you can change this value depending on the font in your character strings.