I have the following code however, I want it to write as a UTF-8 file to handle foreign characters. Is there a way of doing this, is there some need to have a parameter? I would really appreciate your help with this. Thanks. try { BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("C:/Users/Jess/My Documents/actresses.list")); writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("C:/Users/Jess/My Documents/actressesFormatted.csv")); while( (line = reader.readLine()) != null) { //If the line starts with a tab then we just want to add a movie //using the current actor's name. if(line.length() == 0) continue; else if(line.charAt(0) == '\t') { readMovieLine2(0, line, surname.toString(), forename.toString()); } //Else we've reached a new actor else { readActorName(line); } } } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } }