diff --git a/Lib/urllib/request.py b/Lib/urllib/request.py
index 796b700..c77697c 100644
--- a/Lib/urllib/request.py
+++ b/Lib/urllib/request.py
@@ -180,7 +180,7 @@
     def __init__(self, url, data=None, headers={},
                  origin_req_host=None, unverifiable=False):
         # unwrap('<URL:type://host/path>') --> 'type://host/path'
-        self.full_url = unwrap(to_bytes(url))
+        self.full_url = unwrap(url)
         self.full_url = quote(self.full_url, safe="%/:=&?~#+!$,;'@()*[]|")
         self.full_url, self.fragment = splittag(self.full_url)
         self.data = data
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 18d03ef..5c05e02 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -87,8 +87,8 @@
 Library
 -------
 
-- Issue #14826: Quote urls in urllib.request.Request identically to how they
-  are quoted by urllib.request.URLopener. Allows urls to spaces in them to work
+- Issue #14826: Quote urls in urllib.request.Request similar to how they are
+  quoted by urllib.request.URLopener. Allows urls to spaces in them to work
   transparently with urllib.request.urlopen(...). Patch contributed by Stephen
   Thorne.