diff --git a/reference/dom/reference.xml b/reference/dom/reference.xml
index 58dbeeb1b8..536889e79b 100644
--- a/reference/dom/reference.xml
+++ b/reference/dom/reference.xml
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
-<!-- $Revision: 1.30 $ -->
+<!-- $Revision: 1.31 $ -->
 <!-- Purpose: xml -->
 <!-- Membership: bundled, external -->
 
@@ -17,6 +17,13 @@
     <para>
      For PHP 4, use <link linkend="ref.domxml">DOM XML</link>.
     </para>
+    <note>
+     <para>
+      DOM extension uses UTF-8 encoding. Use <function>utf8_encode</function>
+      and <function>utf8_decode</function> to work with texts in ISO-8859-1
+      encoding or <link linkend="ref.iconv">Iconv</link> for other encodings.
+     </para>
+    </note>
    </section>
 
    <section xml:id="dom.installation">