... output-encoding to set the output encoding. Sensible defaults are in place for all three parameters. Files with BOM: Files which contain a BOM (Byte Order Mark) are not properly supported inside python's csv module. q contains a workaround that allows reading UTF8 files which contain a BOM - Use -e utf-8-sig for this. The plan is to separate the BOM handling from the encoding itself, which would allow to support BOMs for all encodings.