PURPOSE: To reduce the capacity of a character generator and utilize effectively a display screen by dividing a character pattern, which has a large number of dots, and making the character generator generate this character pattern.

CONSTITUTION: Selection circuit 10 selects a pertinent one of character generators 7a to 7c by referring to a prescribed bit in the code which is read out from refresh memory 4a. Then, numbers, symbols, etc., which can maintain the character quality by a basic dot constitution have their patterns generated from generator 7a on a basis of the code read out from memory 4a. Meanwhile, in respect to Chinese characters, etc., which cannot obtain the sufficient character quality in the basic dot constitution, a one-character pattern is divided into a right part and a left part and a prescribed code is set to each of them beforehand. Then, generators 7b and 7c are selected by the pertinent code from memory 4a, and the two-divided Chinese character pattern is generated in a joined form and is supplied to video signal generator circuit 8