diff --git a/docs/topics/request-response.rst b/docs/topics/request-response.rst
index ad6c10b6e..397632932 100644
--- a/docs/topics/request-response.rst
+++ b/docs/topics/request-response.rst
@@ -786,8 +786,7 @@ TextResponse objects
        .. note::
 
             ``str(response.body)`` is not a correct way to convert the response
-            body into a string: you would be using the system default encoding
-            (typically ``ascii``) instead of the response encoding.
+            body into a string: ``str(b'')`` returns ``"b''"``.
 
 
     .. attribute:: TextResponse.encoding