diff --git a/CHANGELOG b/CHANGELOG
index 1124187a8d84..37159d5941d7 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG
+++ b/CHANGELOG
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+2012-11-09 Make plt.subplot() without arguments act as subplot(111) - PI
+
 2012-10-05 Add support for saving animations as animated GIFs. - JVDP
 
 2012-08-11 Fix path-closing bug in patches.Polygon, so that regardless
diff --git a/doc/users/whats_new.rst b/doc/users/whats_new.rst
index ce2fd09c57e3..d09c6732af14 100644
--- a/doc/users/whats_new.rst
+++ b/doc/users/whats_new.rst
@@ -26,6 +26,13 @@ Andrew Dawson added a new keyword argument *extendrect* to
 :meth:`~matplotlib.pyplot.colorbar` to optionally make colorbar
 extensions rectangular instead of triangular.
 
+Calling subplot() without arguments
+-----------------------------------
+A call to :func:`~matplotlib.pyplot.subplot` without any arguments now
+acts the same as `subplot(111)` or `subplot(1,1,1)` -- it creates one axes for
+the whole figure. This was already the behavior for both
+:func:`~matplotlib.pyplot.axes` and :func:`~matplotlib.pyplot.subplots`, and
+now this consistency is shared with :func:`~matplotlib.pyplot.subplot`.
 
 .. _whats-new-1-2:
 
diff --git a/lib/matplotlib/pyplot.py b/lib/matplotlib/pyplot.py
index 997382e47d44..4dd2f44504ba 100644
--- a/lib/matplotlib/pyplot.py
+++ b/lib/matplotlib/pyplot.py
@@ -727,6 +727,9 @@ def subplot(*args, **kwargs):
 
     ``subplot(111)`` is the default axis.
 
+    ``subplot()`` by itself is the same as ``subplot(111)``
+
+
     New subplots that overlap old will delete the old axes.  If you do
     not want this behavior, use
     :meth:`~matplotlib.figure.Figure.add_subplot` or the
@@ -768,6 +771,10 @@ def subplot(*args, **kwargs):
     .. plot:: mpl_examples/pylab_examples/subplot_demo.py
 
     """
+    # if subplot called without arguments, create subplot(1,1,1)
+    if len(args)==0:
+        args=(1,1,1)
+
     # This check was added because it is very easy to type
     # subplot(1, 2, False) when subplots(1, 2, False) was intended
     # (sharex=False, that is). In most cases, no error will