Abstract: A method and apparatus for causing the display on a dot matrix display panel to appear to travel by advancing the characters of a message to be displayed in fractional character increments. The circuitry for causing the display characters to appear to travel across the display panel includes a display character generator for cyclically providing the display panel with character information column-by-column for all of the characters of a complete message, and display column enabling electronics for sequentially energizing each column of the display. An incrementing circuit increments either the display character generator or the display column enabling electronics by one column position after the complete message has been displayed and after the display character generator and display column enabling electronics are reset. This gives the appearance on the display panel that the characters of the message have shifted one column position to the left or right.