ftfy: fixes text for you ftfy fixes Unicode that's broken in various ways. The goal of ftfy is to take in bad Unicode and output good Unicode, for use in your Unicode-aware code. This is different from taking in non-Unicode and outputting Unicode, which is not a goal of ftfy. It also isn't designed to protect you from having to write Unicode-aware code. ftfy helps those who help themselves. Of course you're better off if your input is decoded properly and has no glitches. But you often don't have any control over your input; it's someone else's mistake, but it's your problem now. ftfy will do everything it can to fix the problem. WWW: https://github.com/LuminosoInsight/python-ftfy