diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 2d974b8..db7063e 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ pulls reddit data from the [pushshift](https://github.com/pushshift/api) api and
 
 ### install
 
-requires python 3
+requires python 3 on linux, OSX, or Windows
 
     sudo apt-get install pip
     pip install psaw
@@ -44,6 +44,15 @@ to update an html archive, delete everything in `r` aside from `r/static` and re
 
 copy the contents of the `r` directory to a web root or appropriately served git repo.
 
+### Windows users
+
+Windows users may need to run the following before running `fetch_links.py` or `write_html.py`:
+
+    chcp 65001
+    set PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8
+
+This will resolve errors encoding errors such as 'codec can't encode character'.
+
 ### potential improvements
 
 * fetch_links
diff --git a/fetch_links.py b/fetch_links.py
index b2e3416..e7bdc8c 100755
--- a/fetch_links.py
+++ b/fetch_links.py
@@ -120,17 +120,17 @@ def write_links(subreddit, links):
                 filename = 'links.csv'
                 filepath = path + '/' + filename
                 if not os.path.isfile(filepath):
-                    file = open(filepath, 'a')
+                    file = open(filepath, 'a', encoding='utf-8')
                     writer = csv.DictWriter(file, fieldnames=link_fields)
                     writer.writeheader()
                     # print('created %s' % filepath)
                 else:
-                    with open(filepath, 'r') as file:
+                    with open(filepath, 'r', encoding='utf-8') as file:
                         reader = csv.DictReader(file)
                         for row in reader:
                             existing_link_ids.append(row['id'])
 
-                    file = open(filepath, 'a')
+                    file = open(filepath, 'a', encoding='utf-8')
                     writer = csv.DictWriter(file, fieldnames=link_fields)
 
             # create and parse existing comments
@@ -138,17 +138,17 @@ def write_links(subreddit, links):
             filename = r['id'] + '.csv'
             filepath = path + '/' + filename
             if not os.path.isfile(filepath):
-                comments_file = open(filepath, 'a')
+                comments_file = open(filepath, 'a', encoding='utf-8')
                 comments_writer = csv.DictWriter(comments_file, fieldnames=comment_fields)
                 comments_writer.writeheader()
                 # print('created %s' % filepath)
             else:
-                with open(filepath, 'r') as comments_file:
+                with open(filepath, 'r', encoding='utf-8') as comments_file:
                     reader = csv.DictReader(comments_file)
                     for row in reader:
                         existing_comment_ids.append(row['id'])
 
-                comments_file = open(filepath, 'a')
+                comments_file = open(filepath, 'a', encoding='utf-8')
                 comments_writer = csv.DictWriter(comments_file, fieldnames=comment_fields)
 
             # write link row