A circuit for reducing the number of times a character read-only memory (ROM) in a video display must be accessed in order to display outlined characters. For each pixel on a scan line in a character to be displayed the circuit outputs information on the current scan line and the scan lines above and below the current scan line. The pixels above and below the current pixel on the current scan line are summed and output as a single value. Thus, the number of accesses to the character ROM is reduced from three to two.