Abstract: Characters are typed in reverse, i.e. light characters on a dark background by first typing all over the field of the character using an ink ribbon, back spacing and typing the character using a correcting ribbon. The first typing may be effected with a solid character covering the whole field in one or a few operations but, in the preferred embodiment is effected by repeatedly typing a vertical bar with tiny line feed increments, say 1/120". The first typing may take place on depression of a special key, which also effects the back spacing and the correcting ribbon; the character key is then struck. Preferably the whole sequence takes place automatically upon depression of the character key while a mode selector is in REVERSE mode.