A system and method for encoding information is disclosed. In one embodiment, information is encoded using a high protection code for the least significant bit and a low protection code for the next three most significant bits. The remaining bits are uncoded. The high protection code may be a turbo code and the low protection code may be a trellis coded modulation code. In this embodiment, the collection of bits is then mapped according to a diagonally shifted QAM constellation technique.