diff --git a/spacy/syntax/nonproj.pyx b/spacy/syntax/nonproj.pyx
index 28e6dc9e7..566588da4 100644
--- a/spacy/syntax/nonproj.pyx
+++ b/spacy/syntax/nonproj.pyx
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+from __future__ import unicode_literals
 from copy import copy
 
 from ..tokens.doc cimport Doc