To provide a printing apparatus which detects no existence of a character font even when there exists no printing font data in a high order apparatus and an external apparatus and there exists no registration of the character font in the printing apparatus during printing, solves an unregistered condition of the character font by hand writing inputting means of an operator, and can continuously perform printing.

The printing apparatus has a printing means 8 which stores the character font for printing in advance in a storing means 10, and prints printing data 2 from the high order apparatus by using the font, and an operator panel 9. The operator panel 9 has the hand writing inputting means, and when the applicable character font is not registered in the storing means 10 during printing, after being informed that the font is not registered, printing line data where no character font is present are displayed on a screen.