diff --git a/Doc/c-api/unicode.rst b/Doc/c-api/unicode.rst
index 77f123cf1f2..96d77c40841 100644
--- a/Doc/c-api/unicode.rst
+++ b/Doc/c-api/unicode.rst
@@ -978,7 +978,7 @@ have the same semantics as the ones of the built-in :func:`str` string object
 constructor.
 
 Setting encoding to ``NULL`` causes the default encoding to be used
-which is ASCII.  The file system calls should use
+which is UTF-8.  The file system calls should use
 :c:func:`PyUnicode_FSConverter` for encoding file names. This uses the
 variable :c:data:`Py_FileSystemDefaultEncoding` internally. This
 variable should be treated as read-only: on some systems, it will be a