diff --git a/doc/topics/tutorials/http.rst b/doc/topics/tutorials/http.rst
index 3d995df727f0..4d3a14f4b5d9 100644
--- a/doc/topics/tutorials/http.rst
+++ b/doc/topics/tutorials/http.rst
@@ -224,12 +224,18 @@ of Salt's internal structure. Historically, the extension for this file is
 Return Data
 ~~~~~~~~~~~
 
-By default, ``query()`` will attempt to decode the return data. Because it was
-designed to be used with REST interfaces, it will attempt to decode the data
-received from the remote server. First it will check the ``Content-type`` header
-to try and find references to XML. If it does not find any, it will look for
-references to JSON. If it does not find any, it will fall back to plain text,
-which will not be decoded.
+.. note:: Return data encoding
+
+    If ``decode`` is set to ``True``, ``query()`` will attempt to decode the
+    return data. ``decode_type`` defaults to ``auto``.  Set it to a specific
+    encoding, ``xml``, for example, to override autodetection.
+
+Because Salt's http library was designed to be used with REST interfaces,
+``query()`` will attempt to decode the data received from the remote server
+when ``decode`` is set to ``True``.  First it will check the ``Content-type``
+header to try and find references to XML. If it does not find any, it will look
+for references to JSON. If it does not find any, it will fall back to plain
+text, which will not be decoded.
 
 JSON data is translated into a dict using Python's built-in ``json`` library.
 XML is translated using ``salt.utils.xml_util``, which will use Python's