diff --git a/src/main/java/org/dom4j/io/XMLWriter.java b/src/main/java/org/dom4j/io/XMLWriter.java
index 198825dc..3ff0a756 100644
--- a/src/main/java/org/dom4j/io/XMLWriter.java
+++ b/src/main/java/org/dom4j/io/XMLWriter.java
@@ -1662,7 +1662,7 @@ protected String escapeElementEntities(String text) {
                 case '\r':
                     // don't encode standard whitespace characters
                     if (preserve) {
-                        entity = String.valueOf(c);
+                        entity = String.valueOf((char) c);
                     }
                     break;