Abstract: Automatic justifying typewriter includes incremental drive means operatively coupled to a printer for effecting controlled horizontal and vertical movement between a printout sheet and the character printing means. The operation of the printer and the drive means may be controlled either by direct keyboard entry or by coded printing operation and spacing operation control signals from a data source, such as, a computer programmed to prearrange the data, assign a preselected horizontal space to each printing character and compute the horizontal space between words for a preselected line length. The coded control signals control the drive means so that after each character is printed, the drive means will advance the character printing means a preselected number of times for that character; and at the end of each line the drive means will index a preselected number of times according to a predetermined setting.