PURPOSE: To provide the titled printer free from troubles in a feeding system for an ink ribbon, by a method wherein a plurality of colors are coated on an ink ribbon in the longitudinal direction, at least one exothermic element is faced to each of the colors, recording information is sorted into pieces for each color and the pieces of information are fed to the exothermic elements.

CONSTITUTION: The ink ribbon 10 is coated with transmitting inks in four colors, a cyan part 11, a Magenta part 12, a yellow part 13 and a black part 14 in the longitudinal direction. A serial thermal head 15 is provided orthogonally to the longitudinal direction of the ink ribbon 10, and the exothermic elements 16 are provided over a range of length approximately equal to the width of the ribbon 10. When printing a character by using 5×7 dots, 7 exothermic elements 16 are provided in a vertical row for each color component of the ribbon 10. The information to be recorded is sorted into pieces for each color component of the ribbon 10, and the pieces of information are fed to the exothermic elements 16 with a delay according to the movement of a recording paper 21.