diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 4193b71..f750605 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/matthieugomez/StringDistances.jl.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/matthieugomez/StringDistances.jl)
 [![Coverage Status](https://coveralls.io/repos/matthieugomez/StringDistances.jl/badge.svg?branch=master)](https://coveralls.io/r/matthieugomez/StringDistances.jl?branch=master)
 
-This Julia package computes various distances between strings (ASCII)
+This Julia package computes various distances between strings (UTF-8 encoding)
 
 ## Syntax
 The function `compare` returns  a similarity score between two strings. The function always returns a score between 0 and 1, with a value of 0 being completely different and a value of 1 being completely similar.
diff --git a/src/StringDistances.jl b/src/StringDistances.jl
index 9e7fe3f..bca589d 100755
--- a/src/StringDistances.jl
+++ b/src/StringDistances.jl
@@ -1,4 +1,3 @@
-__precompile__(true)
 
 module StringDistances
 
@@ -29,11 +28,16 @@ TokenSort,
 TokenSet,
 TokenMax
 
+
+
+
+
 ##############################################################################
 ##
 ## include
 ##
 ##############################################################################
+
 include("utils.jl")
 include("distances/edit.jl")
 include("distances/qgram.jl")
diff --git a/src/compare.jl b/src/compare.jl
index d14322d..2101319 100755
--- a/src/compare.jl
+++ b/src/compare.jl
@@ -1,3 +1,6 @@
+\
+
+
 ##############################################################################
 ##
 ## compare
@@ -26,6 +29,7 @@ function compare(dist::AbstractQGram, s1::AbstractString, s2::AbstractString)
     end
 end
 
+
 ##############################################################################
 ##
 ## Winkler
diff --git a/src/distances/RatcliffObershelp.jl b/src/distances/RatcliffObershelp.jl
index 669c41d..68d057c 100755
--- a/src/distances/RatcliffObershelp.jl
+++ b/src/distances/RatcliffObershelp.jl
@@ -32,8 +32,8 @@ function matching_blocks!(x::Set{Tuple{Int, Int, Int}}, s1::AbstractString, s2::
     a = longest_common_substring(s1, s2)
     if a[3] > 0
         push!(x, (a[1] + start1 - 1, a[2] + start2 - 1, a[3]))
-        s1before = SubString(s1, firstindex(s1), nextind(s1, 0, a[1]) - 1)
-        s2before = SubString(s2, firstindex(s2), nextind(s2, 0, a[2]) - 1)
+        s1before = SubString(s1, firstindex(s1), nextind(s1, 0, a[1] - 1))
+        s2before = SubString(s2, firstindex(s2), nextind(s2, 0, a[2] - 1))
         matching_blocks!(x, s1before, s2before, start1, start2)
         if ((a[1] + a[3]) <= lastindex(s1)) & ((a[2] + a[3]) <= lastindex(s2))
             s1after = SubString(s1, nextind(s1, 0, a[1] + a[3]), lastindex(s1))
diff --git a/src/distances/qgram.jl b/src/distances/qgram.jl
index bd61572..643f37d 100755
--- a/src/distances/qgram.jl
+++ b/src/distances/qgram.jl
@@ -19,8 +19,8 @@ function Base.iterate(qgram::QGramIterator,
 	nextstate = nextind(qgram.s, istart), nextind(qgram.s, iend)
 	element, nextstate
 end
-Base.eltype(qgram::QGramIterator{S, T}) where {S <: SubString, T} = S
-Base.eltype(qgram::QGramIterator{S, T}) where {S, T} = SubString{S}
+Base.eltype(qgram::QGramIterator{S}) where {S} = SubString{S}
+Base.eltype(qgram::QGramIterator{S}) where {S <: SubString} = S
 Base.length(qgram::QGramIterator) = max(qgram.l - qgram.q + 1, 0)
 
 ##############################################################################
@@ -31,6 +31,11 @@ Base.length(qgram::QGramIterator) = max(qgram.l - qgram.q + 1, 0)
 ## v1 and v2 must be sorted vectors
 ##
 ##############################################################################
+struct CountIteratorBinary{T1, T2}
+	v1::Vector{T1}
+	v2::Vector{T2}
+end
+
 function Base.collect(qgram::QGramIterator)
 	x = Array{eltype(qgram)}(undef, length(qgram))
 	i = 0
@@ -43,11 +48,6 @@ end
 Base.sort(qgram::QGramIterator) = sort!(collect(qgram))
 
 
-struct CountIteratorBinary{T1, T2}
-	v1::Vector{T1}
-	v2::Vector{T2}
-end
-
 function CountIteratorBinary(s1::QGramIterator, s2::QGramIterator)
 	CountIteratorBinary(sort(s1), sort(s2))
 end
diff --git a/test/runtests.jl b/test/runtests.jl
index 05e72a4..47cc30c 100644
--- a/test/runtests.jl
+++ b/test/runtests.jl
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 using StringDistances
 
-tests = ["distances.jl", "modifiers.jl"]
+tests = ["distances.jl", "modifiers.jl", "utf8.jl"]
 
 println("Running tests:")
 
diff --git a/test/utf8.jl b/test/utf8.jl
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4762da0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/utf8.jl
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+
+using StringDistances, Test
+
+# check with weird utf8 strings
+compare(TokenMax(RatcliffObershelp()), "aüa", "aua")
+compare(TokenMax(QGram(2)), "aüa", "aua")
+compare(DamerauLevenshtein(), "aüa", "aua")
+compare(Hamming(), "aüa", "aua")
+compare(Jaro(), "aüa", "aua")
+compare(Levenshtein(), "aüa", "aua")
\ No newline at end of file