A printer that prints images by forming dots on paper in a colorant such as ink is well known in the art. One example of such a printer employs a pair of rollers disposed on the upstream side of a print head and a pair of rollers disposed on the downstream side of the print head to hold the paper while conveying the paper from the upstream side toward the downstream side. When this type of printer executes a printing operation on a sheet of paper, the sheet is held and conveyed by both pairs of rollers while its center portion in the conveying direction passes by the print head. However, only one of the two pairs of rollers holds and conveys the sheet when the upstream edge or downstream edge of the sheet passes by the print head, while the other pair of rollers does not hold the sheet.
Japanese unexamined patent application publication No. 2005-271231 describes a technique for increasing the conveyance amount of the sheet from the preceding conveyance amount when the sheet transitions from a double-held state, in which roller pairs on both sides of the print head grip the sheet, to a single-held state, in which only one pair grips the sheet in order to reduce a decline in the precision for conveying the sheet during this transition.