diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index 25451ec..be6dd73 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -7,6 +7,10 @@ ubuntu-dev-tools (0.158) UNRELEASED; urgency=medium
   [ Colin Watson ]
   * pbuilder-dist, ubuntu-build: Add s390x.
 
+  [ James Page ]
+  * grep-merges: Use unicode string format for pretty output to deal with
+    non ascii encoding.
+
  -- Martin Pitt <martin.pitt@ubuntu.com>  Fri, 13 May 2016 09:04:03 +0200
 
 ubuntu-dev-tools (0.157) unstable; urgency=medium
diff --git a/grep-merges b/grep-merges
index a06e9aa..7326730 100755
--- a/grep-merges
+++ b/grep-merges
@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ def main():
                 author = merge['user']
             if merge.get('uploader'):
                 uploader = '(%s)' % merge['uploader']
-            pretty_uploader = ' '.join((author, uploader)).strip()
+            pretty_uploader = u'{} {}'.format(author, uploader)
             if (match is None or
                 match in package or match in author or match in uploader):
                 print '%s\t%s' % (package.encode("utf-8"), pretty_uploader.encode("utf-8"))