License plate location is a challenging task that is necessary for automatic vehicle identification. This paper presents a new method for locating a license plate when its size and aspect ratio are highly variable. The proposed method begins with an assumption that a license plate exists in a region where dense edges are located. We define an edge region as an area containing rich edges. The edge regions are created by dilating vertical edges, and they are classified into one of four types: left fragment type, right fragment type, whole type, and undefined type. The candidates for a license plate region are constructed by merging edge regions. Knowing what type of edge region is being examined is useful in the merging process. Finally, we verify whether each candidate contains a license plate or not by using the character arrangement information. The arrangement pattern is determined by the size of connected components and by the vertical overlap or horizontal distance between two neighboring components. Experimental results show that the proposed method gives robust results regardless of any variation in the size and aspect ratio of license plates.