# Characters are Garbled

If you see garbled text on the screen, try the following:

- Check you’re using the correct baud rate, data bits, stop bits, and parity for your device. If trying multiple baud rates, reset the emulation (see below) after each baud rate change.
- Reset emulation. It’s possible the terminal has been switched into an alternate character set by stray characters- this is especially common when trying different baud rates. Use the “Reset Emulation” command in the Terminal menu.
- Disable emulation. The terminal may continue to get switched into the alternate character set mode if certain characters are encountered in the data stream. You may prevent this by setting “Emulation” to “None” under settings.
- Make sure the character encoding is set properly. Serial defaults to UTF-8 encoding. You may change Serial’s character encoding within the preferences. If you need an encoding that is not supported by Serial, please let us know.