It is very easy to misread the greek 'nu' used in the ord(c) documentation as ord('v') (i.e. an alphabetic 'v').  This can lead the reader to draw a wrong conclusion about the behaviour of the function. 

Would it not be better if this example used a greek letter that is less easy to misread in this way?  Or, perhaps, add extra text indicating that the greek letter 'nu' is being referenced?

I suggest to use the EURO SIGN € (U+20ac).

Sure!

Wouldn't '\N{SNAKE}' look more pythonic?  😀

>>> hex(ord('🐍'))
'0x1f40d'

'🐍' is astral character and not all systems have fonts that support it installed by default. It can be hard to render it in TeX.

This was changed in the following commit.

changeset:   95165:f6c6304c8193
user:        Benjamin Peterson <benjamin at python.org>
date:        Tue Mar 24 12:12:44 2015 -0400
summary:
  change Σ to ν for obscure joke reasons

https://twitter.com/ncoghlan_dev/status/579173053793353728

The easily misread "ord('ν')" could be expanded to "ord('ν') (Greek nu)" but I agree that "ord('€') (Euro sign)" would be either better for a global doc.  (And the return is 8364.)  If no objection (Benjamin? Nick?), I am willing to do it for 3.5/6

There is no need to change the 2.7 version "ord(u'\u2020') returns 8224."

I concur that the Euro sign would be best (more recognizable and more likely to be renderable in a given font).

New changeset c7071c9b8c33 by Terry Jan Reedy in branch '3.5':
Issue #26525: Change ord example from nu to more easily recognized Euro sign.
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/c7071c9b8c33

Reversed to ord() function chr() still uses 'ν' as an example. I think both functions should use the same example.

New changeset f3bd94c57cd8 by Terry Jan Reedy in branch '3.5':
Issue #26525: Change chr example to match change in ord example.
https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/f3bd94c57cd8

Agreed.  Good catch.