Repetitive discharges, powered by a train of negative, flat‐topped maintenance pulses of amplitudeV1, can be suppressed by applying a similarly shaped ‘‘spurious’’ voltage pulse of amplitudeV2at a time interval oftqafter each maintenance pulse. Suppression occurs, even with quite small values ofV2, a phenomenon that can be explained by taking account of how the spurious pulses affect the electric charges left behind in the discharge tube by each of the driven discharges. The results are relevant to elucidating ‘‘cross talk’’ between discharge tubes in display panels.