Impact printers use actuators that tap print elements against the paper, usually pressing an intervening ink-impregnated ribbon , to create shapes of letters or graphics characters on the page. The print elements may be fully-formed characters or may be matrices of pins that produce characters or images formed from dot patterns. Examples are dot-matrix printers, typewriter-style printers, and commercial line printers,
Non-impact printers are of very different kinds. Laser printers heat-fuse toner to charged locations on a page, and inkjet printers express tiny droplets of ink onto the page, using dot patterns to compose letters and other images.