diff --git a/panda/src/express/textEncoder.cxx b/panda/src/express/textEncoder.cxx
index 127bbd89f4..5257897383 100644
--- a/panda/src/express/textEncoder.cxx
+++ b/panda/src/express/textEncoder.cxx
@@ -374,7 +374,7 @@ operator >> (istream &in, TextEncoder::Encoding &encoding) {
 
   if (word == "iso8859") {
     encoding = TextEncoder::E_iso8859;
-  } else if (word == "utf8") {
+  } else if (word == "utf8" || word == "utf-8") {
     encoding = TextEncoder::E_utf8;
   } else if (word == "unicode") {
     encoding = TextEncoder::E_unicode;