PURPOSE: To easily add display mode information by decreasing the substantial amount of data containing the display modes of characters and changing the display modes speedily.

CONSTITUTION: A display character specifying circuit 1 consists of a character selecting circuit 4 which holds information for specifying character patterns to be displayed and information for specifying a display mode register 5 and a display mode register 5 which holds the display mode information on the display characters. A character generator 2 outputs character patterns corresponding to character codes specified with the display character pattern information of a display character specifying circuit 11. A display output control circuit 3 performs display output control over the characters according to the outputs of the character generator 2 and display character specifying circuit 11.