This option is used to select between the format headers output column
width option. This option should be independent of the locale setting.
It's encouraged to default to Unicode unless the platform doesn't offer
that option.
[format.string.std]/10
For the purposes of width computation, a string is assumed to be in a locale-independent, implementation-defined encoding. Implementations should use a Unicode encoding on platforms capable of displaying Unicode
I would not mention the special behavior of <format> specifically, since eventually there will be more that depends on this option.