diff --git a/morss/morss.py b/morss/morss.py
index 4f4b9af..e894546 100644
--- a/morss/morss.py
+++ b/morss/morss.py
@@ -260,7 +260,7 @@ def ItemFill(item, options, feedurl='/', fast=False):
         log('non-text page')
         return True
 
-    out = readabilite.get_article(data, url=con.geturl(), encoding=encoding)
+    out = readabilite.get_article(data, url=con.geturl(), encoding_in=encoding, encoding_out='unicode')
 
     if out is not None:
         item.content = out
@@ -635,7 +635,7 @@ def cgi_get(environ, start_response):
             output = lxml.etree.tostring(html.getroottree(), encoding='utf-8')
 
         elif options.get == 'article':
-            output = readabilite.get_article(data, url=con.geturl(), encoding=encoding, debug=options.debug)
+            output = readabilite.get_article(data, url=con.geturl(), encoding_in=encoding, encoding_out='utf-8', debug=options.debug)
 
         else:
             raise MorssException('no :get option passed')
diff --git a/morss/readabilite.py b/morss/readabilite.py
index 41a6991..e14f88b 100644
--- a/morss/readabilite.py
+++ b/morss/readabilite.py
@@ -316,10 +316,10 @@ def get_best_node(ranked_grades):
     return lowest
 
 
-def get_article(data, url=None, encoding=None, debug=False, threshold=5):
+def get_article(data, url=None, encoding_in=None, encoding_out='unicode', debug=False, threshold=5):
     " Input a raw html string, returns a raw html string of the article "
 
-    html = parse(data, encoding)
+    html = parse(data, encoding_in)
     score_all(html)
     scores = rank_grades(get_all_scores(html))
 
@@ -341,7 +341,7 @@ def get_article(data, url=None, encoding=None, debug=False, threshold=5):
     if url:
         best.make_links_absolute(url)
 
-    return lxml.etree.tostring(best if not debug else html, pretty_print=True)
+    return lxml.etree.tostring(best if not debug else html, pretty_print=True, encoding=encoding_out)
 
 
 if __name__ == '__main__':
@@ -349,7 +349,7 @@ if __name__ == '__main__':
     from . import crawler
 
     data, con, contenttype, encoding = crawler.adv_get(sys.argv[1] if len(sys.argv) > 1 else 'https://morss.it')
-    article = get_article(data, url=con.geturl(), encoding=encoding)
+    article = get_article(data, url=con.geturl(), encoding_in=encoding, encoding_out='unicode')
 
     if not sys.flags.interactive:
-        print(article.decode(encoding))
+        print(article)