diff --git a/src/unicode/utf8/example_test.go b/src/unicode/utf8/example_test.go
index 7b3e7ac7425..5cd931d2427 100644
--- a/src/unicode/utf8/example_test.go
+++ b/src/unicode/utf8/example_test.go
@@ -107,6 +107,26 @@ func ExampleEncodeRune() {
 	// 3
 }
 
+func ExampleEncodeRune_outOfRange() {
+	runes := []rune{
+		// Less than 0, out of range.
+		-1,
+		// Greater than 0x10FFFF, out of range.
+		0x110000,
+		// The Unicode replacement character.
+		utf8.RuneError,
+	}
+	for i, c := range runes {
+		buf := make([]byte, 3)
+		size := utf8.EncodeRune(buf, c)
+		fmt.Printf("%d: %d %[2]s %d\n", i, buf, size)
+	}
+	// Output:
+	// 0: [239 191 189] � 3
+	// 1: [239 191 189] � 3
+	// 2: [239 191 189] � 3
+}
+
 func ExampleFullRune() {
 	buf := []byte{228, 184, 150} // 世
 	fmt.Println(utf8.FullRune(buf))
diff --git a/src/unicode/utf8/utf8.go b/src/unicode/utf8/utf8.go
index ef0d7409602..557e8a7770c 100644
--- a/src/unicode/utf8/utf8.go
+++ b/src/unicode/utf8/utf8.go
@@ -337,6 +337,7 @@ func RuneLen(r rune) int {
 }
 
 // EncodeRune writes into p (which must be large enough) the UTF-8 encoding of the rune.
+// If the rune is out of range, it writes the encoding of RuneError.
 // It returns the number of bytes written.
 func EncodeRune(p []byte, r rune) int {
 	// Negative values are erroneous. Making it unsigned addresses the problem.