UnicodeDecodeError (character maps to ) when reading a text file [duplicate]

UnicodeDecodeError means Python is reading the file with the wrong text encoding.

Your file likely is not being decoded correctly by the default Windows encoding, so specify one explicitly:

with open("0_intro.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8") as intro_doc: print(intro_doc.read())

If that still fails, try encoding="cp1252".

Also, intro_text.close is incorrect:

intro_text is a list, not the file

close needs parentheses

using with open(...) is better because it closes the file automatically