l s is the initial header value. If None, the initial header value is not set. You can later append to the header with .append() method calls. s may be a byte string or a Unicode string, but see the .append() documentation for semantics. Optional charset serves two purposes: it has the same meaning as the charset argument to the .append() method. It also sets the default character set for all subsequent .append() calls that omit the charset argument. If charset is not provided in the constructor, the us-ascii charset is used both as s's initial charset and as the default for subsequent .append() calls. The maximum line length can be specified explicitly via maxlinelen. For splitting the first line to a shorter value (to account for the field header which isn't included in s, e.g. `Subject') pass in the name of the field in header_name. The default maxlinelen is 78 as recommended by RFC 2822. continuation_ws must be RFC 2822 compliant folding whitespace (usually either a space or a hard tab) which will be prepended to continuation lines. errors is passed through to the .append() call. Nr