diff --git a/src/phpDocumentor/Reflection/File.php b/src/phpDocumentor/Reflection/File.php
index e3608f891e..8dca7be983 100644
--- a/src/phpDocumentor/Reflection/File.php
+++ b/src/phpDocumentor/Reflection/File.php
@@ -191,7 +191,7 @@ protected function convertToUtf8($filename, $contents)
             && function_exists('mb_detect_encoding')
         ) {
             // OR with mbstring
-            $encoding = mb_detect_encoding($contents);
+            $encoding = mb_detect_encoding($contents,'UTF-8,ISO-8859-1');
         }
 
         // if the encoding is detected as binary we try again