A method of additive encoding of data words includes receiving a plurality of data words, and searching a trellis representation of additive code words to identify a path in the trellis representing a sequence of patterns to be used to encode the data words. The trellis representation is of all possible combinations of matching patterns in a sequence of additive code words. The trellis representation of the additive code words is searched to identify a sequence of flags representing the sequence of patterns to be used to encode the data words.