To provide a printing apparatus with high printing quality that reduces a transport amount of an ink ribbon except printing operation and that suppresses skew of the ink ribbon, diameters of spools 43, 44 are calculated from rotation amounts of the supply spool 43 and wind-up spool 44 corresponding to a printing length in a sub-scanning direction of the printing data during driving of a thermal head 40, a value of the calculated diameter is compared with a value of a beforehand set diameter, it is thereby determined whether or not an ink ribbon 41 is near empty, and when the ink ribbon is not near empty, the ribbon 41 is wound around the spool 44 up to a printing end position in which a rear end of a used portion of the ribbon 41 passes through a peeling member 28, while when the ink ribbon is near empty, the ribbon 41 is wound around the spool 44 until an empty mark EMP_M arrives at a position detectable by a sensor Se2, and then is rewound around the spool 43 until a front end of an unused portion of the ribbon 41 arrives at a feeding position.