diff --git a/packages/markitdown/src/markitdown/_markitdown.py b/packages/markitdown/src/markitdown/_markitdown.py
index 8e2fe6a37c..59bf0d1e61 100644
--- a/packages/markitdown/src/markitdown/_markitdown.py
+++ b/packages/markitdown/src/markitdown/_markitdown.py
@@ -775,6 +775,15 @@ def _get_stream_info_guesses(
                     if charset_result is not None:
                         charset = self._normalize_charset(charset_result.encoding)
 
+                    # The detector can read a short non-ASCII UTF-8 sample as
+                    # UTF-16 and garble it. Bytes that decode as UTF-8 are UTF-8.
+                    if not stream_page.isascii():
+                        try:
+                            stream_page.decode("utf-8")
+                            charset = "utf-8"
+                        except UnicodeDecodeError:
+                            pass
+
                 # Normalize the first extension listed
                 guessed_extension = None
                 if len(result.prediction.output.extensions) > 0:
diff --git a/packages/markitdown/tests/test_module_misc.py b/packages/markitdown/tests/test_module_misc.py
index 4d6c9be59b..d86493b316 100644
--- a/packages/markitdown/tests/test_module_misc.py
+++ b/packages/markitdown/tests/test_module_misc.py
@@ -748,6 +748,18 @@ def test_split_utf8_json_preserves_content(
     assert result.markdown == data.decode("utf-8")
 
 
+@pytest.mark.parametrize("text", ["ok ✓", "AAAㇰ"])
+def test_short_utf8_text_is_not_guessed_as_utf16(
+    markitdown: MarkItDown, text: str
+) -> None:
+    # charset_normalizer reads these short UTF-8 samples as UTF-16-BE.
+    stream = io.BytesIO(text.encode("utf-8"))
+
+    result = markitdown.convert_stream(stream, stream_info=StreamInfo(extension=".txt"))
+
+    assert result.markdown == text
+
+
 @pytest.mark.parametrize(
     "sample,tail",
     [