Abstract: A method and apparatus for printing Chinese or other ideographic characters. An operator enters upon a keyboard a sequence of sub-structures composing the character to be printed. The particular set of sub-structures disclosed enables an operator to type in the sub-structures in a manner substantially identical with the way in which the words would be written, thus minimizing special training necessary for the operation of the system. Apparatus is disclosed for processing signals from the keyboard to identify and print in dot-matrix form the proper Chinese characters.