diff --git a/rtv/docs.py b/rtv/docs.py
index 166d1fb..05f88eb 100644
--- a/rtv/docs.py
+++ b/rtv/docs.py
@@ -54,7 +54,7 @@ Submission Mode
 
 """
 
-COMMENT_FILE = """
+COMMENT_FILE = u"""
 # Please enter a comment. Lines starting with '#' will be ignored,
 # and an empty message aborts the comment.
 #
@@ -62,14 +62,14 @@ COMMENT_FILE = """
 {content}
 """
 
-COMMENT_EDIT_FILE = """{content}
+COMMENT_EDIT_FILE = u"""{content}
 # Please enter a comment. Lines starting with '#' will be ignored,
 # and an empty message aborts the comment.
 #
 # Editing your comment
 """
 
-SUBMISSION_FILE = """{content}
+SUBMISSION_FILE = u"""{content}
 # Please enter your submission. Lines starting with '#' will be ignored,
 # and an empty field aborts the submission.
 #
diff --git a/rtv/helpers.py b/rtv/helpers.py
index 7637635..85f94e3 100644
--- a/rtv/helpers.py
+++ b/rtv/helpers.py
@@ -16,6 +16,39 @@ from .exceptions import ProgramError
 __all__ = ['open_browser', 'clean', 'wrap_text', 'strip_textpad',
            'strip_subreddit_url', 'humanize_timestamp', 'open_editor']
 
+def clean(string, n_cols=None):
+    """
+    Required reading!
+        http://nedbatchelder.com/text/unipain.html
+
+    Python 2 input string will be a unicode type (unicode code points). Curses
+    will accept unicode if all of the points are in the ascii range. However, if
+    any of the code points are not valid ascii curses will throw a
+    UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character, ordinal not in
+    range(128). If we encode the unicode to a utf-8 byte string and pass that to
+    curses, it will render correctly.
+
+    Python 3 input string will be a string type (unicode code points). Curses
+    will accept that in all cases. However, the n character count in addnstr
+    will not be correct. If code points are passed to addnstr, curses will treat
+    each code point as one character and will not account for wide characters.
+    If utf-8 is passed in, addnstr will treat each 'byte' as a single character.
+    """
+
+    if n_cols is not None and n_cols <= 0:
+        return ''
+
+    if not config.unicode:
+        if six.PY3 or isinstance(string, unicode):
+            string = string.encode('ascii', 'replace')
+        return string[:n_cols] if n_cols else string
+    else:
+        if n_cols:
+            string = textual_width_chop(string, n_cols)
+        if six.PY3 or isinstance(string, unicode):
+            string = string.encode('utf-8')
+        return string
+
 def open_editor(data=''):
     """
     Open a temporary file using the system's default editor.
@@ -26,7 +59,7 @@ def open_editor(data=''):
     """
 
     with NamedTemporaryFile(prefix='rtv-', suffix='.txt', mode='w') as fp:
-        fp.write(data)
+        fp.write(clean(data))
         fp.flush()
         editor = os.getenv('RTV_EDITOR') or os.getenv('EDITOR') or 'nano'
 
@@ -91,41 +124,6 @@ def open_browser(url):
         webbrowser.open_new_tab(url)
         curses.doupdate()
 
-
-def clean(string, n_cols=None):
-    """
-    Required reading!
-        http://nedbatchelder.com/text/unipain.html
-
-    Python 2 input string will be a unicode type (unicode code points). Curses
-    will accept unicode if all of the points are in the ascii range. However, if
-    any of the code points are not valid ascii curses will throw a
-    UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character, ordinal not in
-    range(128). If we encode the unicode to a utf-8 byte string and pass that to
-    curses, it will render correctly.
-
-    Python 3 input string will be a string type (unicode code points). Curses
-    will accept that in all cases. However, the n character count in addnstr
-    will not be correct. If code points are passed to addnstr, curses will treat
-    each code point as one character and will not account for wide characters.
-    If utf-8 is passed in, addnstr will treat each 'byte' as a single character.
-    """
-
-    if n_cols is not None and n_cols <= 0:
-        return ''
-
-    if not config.unicode:
-        if six.PY3 or isinstance(string, unicode):
-            string = string.encode('ascii', 'replace')
-        return string[:n_cols] if n_cols else string
-    else:
-        if n_cols:
-            string = textual_width_chop(string, n_cols)
-        if six.PY3 or isinstance(string, unicode):
-            string = string.encode('utf-8')
-        return string
-
-
 def wrap_text(text, width):
     """
     Wrap text paragraphs to the given character width while preserving newlines.