diff -r acaf73e3d882 Doc/library/codecs.rst
--- a/Doc/library/codecs.rst	Sat Jun 29 18:42:24 2013 -0400
+++ b/Doc/library/codecs.rst	Mon Jul 08 14:59:33 2013 +1000
@@ -22,6 +22,21 @@
 
 It defines the following functions:
 
+.. function:: encode(obj, encoding='utf-8', errors='strict')
+
+    Encodes obj using the codec registered for encoding. Errors may be given
+    to set a different error handling scheme. Default is ``strict`` meaning that
+    encoding errors raise a :exc:`ValueError`. Other possible values are ``ignore``, 
+    ``replace`` and ``xmlcharrefreplace`` as well as any other name registered with 
+    ``codecs.register_error`` that can handle :exc:`ValueError`.
+
+.. function:: decode(obj, encoding='utf-8', errors='strict')
+
+    Decodes obj using the codec registered for encoding. Errors may be given
+    to set a different error handling scheme. Default is ``strict`` meaning that
+    encoding errors raise a :exc:`ValueError`. Other possible values are ``ignore``
+    and ``replace`` as well as any other name registered with ``codecs.register_error``
+    that is able to handle :exc:`ValueError`.
 
 .. function:: register(search_function)
 
diff -r acaf73e3d882 Doc/whatsnew/3.4.rst
--- a/Doc/whatsnew/3.4.rst	Sat Jun 29 18:42:24 2013 -0400
+++ b/Doc/whatsnew/3.4.rst	Mon Jul 08 14:59:33 2013 +1000
@@ -223,12 +223,22 @@
 plain tuple.  (Contributed by Claudiu Popa in :issue:`17487`.)
 
 stat
----
+----
 
 The stat module is now backed by a C implementation in :mod:`_stat`. A C
 implementation is required as most of the values aren't standardized and
 platform-dependent.  (Contributed by Christian Heimes in :issue:`11016`.)
 
+codec
+-----
+
+The :meth:`~codec.encode` and :meth:`~codec.decode` convenience methods have
+now been added to the documentation. The difference between these methods and
+similiar methods for str, bytes and bytearray, is that the latter have 
+additional type checks to limit their usage to text encodings. These methods
+have existed in the codecs module since ~2004, but were only documented through
+docstrings.
+
 Optimizations
 =============