A method for automatically providing vertical misalignment correction in a hand held printer fixedly mounting a printhead having a plurality of ink jetting nozzles arranged in a column includes defining a fixed quantity subset of the plurality of ink jetting nozzles for printing a print swath; defining a reference line corresponding to a desired printing path; assigning print data to the feed quantity subset of the plurality of ink jetting nozzles for printing the print swath along the desired printing path; determining an amount of vertical deviation of the hand held printer from the reference line as the hand held printer is hand-scanned along the desired printing path; and dynamically shifting a location of the fixed quantity subset within the plurality of ink jetting nozzles to compensate for the amount of vertical deviation as the hand held printer is hand-scanned along the desired printing path.