  We give an extension of the classical Schensted correspondence to the case of
ribbon tableaux, where ribbons are allowed to be of different sizes. This is
done by extending Fomin's growth diagram approach of the classical
correspondence between permutations and pairs of standard tableaux of the same
shape, in particular by allowing signs in the enumeration. As an application we
give a combinatorial proof for the column sums of the character table of the
symmetric group.
