diff --git a/Doc/library/subprocess.rst b/Doc/library/subprocess.rst
--- a/Doc/library/subprocess.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/subprocess.rst
@@ -1039,7 +1039,7 @@
 
    (child_stdout, child_stdin) = popen2.popen2("somestring", bufsize, mode)
    ==>
-   p = Popen(["somestring"], shell=True, bufsize=bufsize,
+   p = Popen("somestring", shell=True, bufsize=bufsize,
              stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, close_fds=True)
    (child_stdout, child_stdin) = (p.stdout, p.stdin)