diff --git a/appendices/migration54.xml b/appendices/migration54.xml
index 39f12771d4..8c8b882ed3 100644
--- a/appendices/migration54.xml
+++ b/appendices/migration54.xml
@@ -1349,11 +1349,18 @@
   <itemizedlist>
    <listitem>
     <simpara>
-     The default character set is now <literal>UTF-8</literal>, instead of <literal>ISO-8859-1</literal>,
-     when the <link linkend="ini.default-charset">default_charset</link> configuration setting is not set
-     ("", which is the default). This applies to functions such as <function>htmlentities</function> and
-     <function>htmlspecialchars</function>, or any code that relies on <literal>determine_charset(NULL)</literal>
-     internally.
+     The default character set for <function>htmlspecialchars</function> 
+     and <function>htmlentities</function> is now <literal>UTF-8</literal>,
+     instead of <literal>ISO-8859-1</literal>.  Note that changing your output
+     charset via the <link linkend="ini.default-charset">default_charset</link>
+     configuration setting does not affect htmlspecialchars/htmlentities unless
+     you are passing "" (an empty string) as the encoding parameter to your 
+     <function>htmlspecialchars</function>/<function>htmlentities</function> calls.
+     Generally we do not recommend doing this because you should be able to
+     change your output charset without affecting the runtime charset used by
+     these functions. The safest approach is to explicitly set the charset on
+     each call to <function>htmlspecialchars</function> and 
+     <function>htmlentities</function>.
     </simpara>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>