The invention provides a method and device for displaying characters. The method comprises the following steps: a character registering queue and a searched character queue are created, wherein the character registering queue is used for storing rendered character images and the searched character queue is used for storing character codes corresponding to the rendered character images; starting signals are sent to a foreground thread controller and a background thread controller respectively; the foreground thread controller responds to the starting signal, reads the character codes corresponding to the characters input by a user and sends the character codes to the background thread controller; the background thread controller responds to the starting signal, receives the character codessent by the foreground thread controller and traverses the character queue to search whether the character codes are stored in the character queue, and if so, the background thread controller obtainsthe rendered character images corresponding to the character codes from the character registering queue and sending the rendered character images to the foreground thread controller; and the foreground thread controller receives the rendered character images sent by the background thread controller, corresponding to the character codes and outputs the rendered character images to a foreground rendering screen to be displayed. The embodiment of the invention has the beneficial effect of improving the character displaying speed.