The Unicode encoding scheme that serialises a UTF-32 code unit sequence as a byte sequence in either big-endian or little-endian format.

• In the UTF-32 encoding scheme, the UTF-32 code unit sequence <0000004D 00000430 00004E8C 00010302> is serialised as <00 00 FE FF 00 00 00 4D 00 00 04 30 00 00 4E 8C 00 01 03 02> or or <00 00 00 4D 00 00 04 30 00 00 4E 8C 00 01 03 02>.
• In the UTF-32 encoding scheme, an initial byte sequence corresponding to U+FEFF is interpreted as a byte order mark; it is used to distinguish between the two byte orders. An initial byte sequence <00 00 FE FF> indicates big-endian order, and an initial byte sequence indicates little-endian order. The BOM is not considered part of the content of the text.
• The UTF-32 encoding scheme may or may not begin with a BOM. However, when there is no BOM, and in the absence of a higher-level protocol, the byte order of the UTF-32 encoding scheme is big-endian.