diff --git a/src/calibre/ebooks/metadata/sources/base.py b/src/calibre/ebooks/metadata/sources/base.py
index e6bc3b58a1..c8dfd02ac5 100644
--- a/src/calibre/ebooks/metadata/sources/base.py
+++ b/src/calibre/ebooks/metadata/sources/base.py
@@ -211,8 +211,8 @@ class Source(Plugin):
     #: Set this to True if your plugin returns HTML formatted comments
     has_html_comments = False
 
-    #: Setting this to True means that the browser object will add
-    #: Accept-Encoding: gzip to all requests. This can speedup downloads
+    #: Setting this to True means that the browser object will indicate
+    #: that it supports gzip transfer encoding. This can speedup downloads
     #: but make sure that the source actually supports gzip transfer encoding
     #: correctly first
     supports_gzip_transfer_encoding = False
diff --git a/src/calibre/utils/config_base.py b/src/calibre/utils/config_base.py
index cfd4a85dc6..6ed1700dc5 100644
--- a/src/calibre/utils/config_base.py
+++ b/src/calibre/utils/config_base.py
@@ -156,7 +156,10 @@ class OptionSet(object):
             if opt.help:
                 opt.help = t(opt.help)
                 if opt.name == 'use_primary_find_in_search':
-                    opt.help = opt.help.format(u'ñ')
+                    h = opt.help
+                    if isinstance(h, bytes):
+                        h = h.decode('utf-8', 'replace')
+                    opt.help = h.format(u'ñ')
 
     def option_parser(self, user_defaults=None, usage='', gui_mode=False):
         from calibre.utils.config import OptionParser