diff --git a/spacy/tokens/doc.pyx b/spacy/tokens/doc.pyx
index 7a2e95e4b..fb15323f5 100644
--- a/spacy/tokens/doc.pyx
+++ b/spacy/tokens/doc.pyx
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ from ..attrs cimport LENGTH, POS, LEMMA, TAG, DEP, HEAD, SPACY, ENT_IOB
 from ..attrs cimport ENT_TYPE, SENT_START
 from ..parts_of_speech cimport CCONJ, PUNCT, NOUN, univ_pos_t
 from ..util import normalize_slice
-from ..compat import is_config, copy_reg, pickle
+from ..compat import is_config, copy_reg, pickle, basestring_
 from .. import about
 from .. import util
 from .underscore import Underscore
@@ -571,7 +571,8 @@ cdef class Doc:
         cdef np.ndarray[attr_t, ndim=1] attr_ids
         cdef np.ndarray[attr_t, ndim=2] output
         # Handle scalar/list inputs of strings/ints for py_attr_ids
-        if not hasattr(py_attr_ids, '__iter__'):
+        if not hasattr(py_attr_ids, '__iter__') \
+        and not isinstance(py_attr_ids, basestring_):
             py_attr_ids = [py_attr_ids]
 
         # Allow strings, e.g. 'lemma' or 'LEMMA'