"In UTF-8, the BOM corresponds to the byte sequence <EF16 BB16 BF16>. Although there are never any questions of byte order with UTF-8 text, this sequence can se

"In UTF-8, the BOM corresponds to the byte sequence <EF16 BB16 BF16>. Although there are never any questions of byte order with UTF-8 text, this sequence can serve as signature for UTF-8 encoded text where the character set is unmarked." http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.2.0/ch16.pdf http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode5.2.0/ch16.pdf