A bichrome ribbon is carried in an upwardly biased ribbon fork for movement between a lowered position and a raised position to bring different colored portions adjacent one of a plurality of characters on a print wheel for being impacted by a platen carrying a recording medium. The print wheel is rotatably driven by a pivoting gear segment to position a selected character for printing, and the ribbon fork is normally limited to the lowered position by an armature of an unenergized control magnet which is spring biased into blocking relation with a control pawl linked to the ribbon fork. The ribbon is moved to the raised position by first energizing the control magnet to pull the armature from the control pawl, and to minimize the required strength of the control magnet the control pawl is held out of frictional engagement with the armature by a stop on the gear segment engaging the ribbon fork and holding it slightly below the lowered position when the gear segment is at its rest position. The subsequent movement of the ribbon fork to the raised position is in accordance with the movement of the gear segment, and the upward movement is limited by a stop pin engaging an end of an elongated slot in the control pawl as the ribbon fork reaches the raised position. After printing, the ribbon fork is returned to the lowered position by the stop on the gear segment as it moves to the rest position, whereupon the control magnet is deenergized to return the armature to blocking relation with the control pawl.