Matthias’s proposal adds support for a new keyword-only “exc” argument: print_exception(exc=exception_instance) I still think it is worth supporting a single positional argument as well: print_exception(exception_instance) Another point is that it may be better to keep the existing parameter name “value”, rather than (eventually?) replacing it with “exc”. I think both of these things could be accomplished by juggling the “value” and “etype” parameters: def print_exception(etype=None, value=None, tb=None, ...): if value is None: # Assume value passed as first positional argument value = etype etype = None if etype is tb is None: # Only value passed etype = type(value) tb = value.__traceback__ # Existing code using (etype, value, tb) The disadvantage of any of these changes is that we may want to maintain support for the old signature while Python 2 remains alive.