A display apparatus is designed to make a display corresponding to one pixel through the use of a plurality of rectangular display elements. The apparatus comprises a multi-gradation character generating unit for generating information on a multi-gradation character image obtained by gradating a character edge portion and an element display control unit for controlling a display state in a display unit on the basis of information on this multi-gradation character image so that the multi-gradation character image is displayed in a state where each of the rectangular display elements constituting the display unit is associated with one or more pixels, thus reducing the quantization error so that character display with high visibility is achievable in the case of display of highly fine characters.