by a few elemental steps each covering a fraction of a switching step from the printing position in the same direction as the immediately previously occurring relative movement between the carriage 7 and the record carrier medium 27 then performing an oppositely directed relative movement by the same number of elemental steps into the printing position and printing with the selected print type face a second time and the above described correction process is suitable for a direction independent printing operation with the play resulting due to mechanical or control engineering reasons between the stepping motor 39 the cable 37 and the carriage 7 being nullified in the simplest manner for both displacement directions as shown in fig5 this sequence can be performed by bringing carriage 7 by operation of motor 39 from position 83 in the direction of the arrow 85 into the printing position 98 this can be effected for example by actuation of a back space key on the keyboard 55 because of the above mentioned play the carriage 7 normally does not reach the desired ideal printing position 87 but instead a position 98 which differs from the printing position 87 by a fraction u03b4s of a switching step a switching step is equal in length to the distance between successive characters on a typed line then the correction key 81 on the keyboard 55 is actuated and this causes the control element 59 to bring the correction device into the operating position and to send an actuation signal via.