Chris Jerdonek added the comment: The distinction between ? vs. � for encode() and decode() is in the Python docs, but it's not prominent. It's mentioned in codecs's "Codec Base Classes" but not in the encode() and decode() docs themselves: http://docs.python.org/dev/library/codecs.html#codec-base-classes ---------- _______________________________________ Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue15949> _______________________________________