To obtain a comvenient electronic mail terminal with a small space to be required at the time of usage by compressing the data amount of inputted hand-written characters and transmitting compressed information as a mail signal.

An electronic mail transmitted to the user of the electronic main terminal is received by a controller 2, an image forming part 2c forms an image signal based on the electronic mail received by a receiving circuit 2b and it is displayed by LCD12 of HMD3. Thus, the user reads the electronic mail. In the meantime, when the user wants to write the electronic mail so as to transmit it, the senteses of a transmission mail are writtten in the hand- written characters through the use of writing implements such as a pencil, etc., on a normal paper sheet. Then, a character code converting part 2e converts the hand-written characters in image data into a character code string based on image data which is stored in an image memory 2d and transmits it from a transmitting circuit 2f as the electronic mail.