An electronic typewriter having a display device which shows just the last entered characters of a printing line. The typewriter comprises a selector for an immediate typing mode of the entered character, a line/line mode in which each line is set up in memory and typed on operating a service key, and a word/word mode in which the set up words are typed word by word, i.e. on each operation of the space bar. This facilitates typing with checking to eliminate all errors. The display device shows emphasized characters, different kinds of emphasis (heavy type, light type on dark background being indicated by different luminous dot patterns under the characters. The display device is of the dot matrix type and, by suitable circuits thereto superposed characters, e.g. 0 and 1 yielding .phi., are correctly shown.