diff --git a/trl/trainer/ppo_trainer.py b/trl/trainer/ppo_trainer.py
index ef29461a70..83926cfd6a 100644
--- a/trl/trainer/ppo_trainer.py
+++ b/trl/trainer/ppo_trainer.py
@@ -138,10 +138,18 @@ def __init__(
         if data_collator is None:
             data_collator = DataCollatorWithPadding(self.processing_class)
 
-        self.policy_model.generation_config.eos_token_id = (
-            None  # disable `pad_token_id` and `eos_token_id` because we just want to
-        )
-        self.policy_model.generation_config.pad_token_id = None  # generate tokens without truncation / padding
+        # Handle stop token settings: update policy model's generation_config to use provided stop token
+        if args.stop_token and args.stop_token_id:
+            raise ValueError("You cannot set both `stop_token` and `stop_token_id`.")
+        elif args.stop_token:
+            if args.stop_token == "eos":
+                self.policy_model.generation_config.eos_token_id = self.stop_token_id = processing_class.eos_token_id
+            else:
+                raise ValueError(
+                    f"Unknown `stop_token` {args.stop_token}. Allowed values are: `'eos'` and `None` (no stop token)."
+                )
+        else:
+            self.policy_model.generation_config.eos_token_id = self.stop_token_id = args.stop_token_id  # None or int
 
         # peft support
         if not is_peft_available() and peft_config is not None:
@@ -220,8 +228,6 @@ def __init__(
         for module in [self.policy_model, self.ref_model, self.value_model, self.reward_model]:
             if module is not None:
                 disable_dropout_in_model(module)
-        if args.stop_token and args.stop_token == "eos":
-            args.stop_token_id = processing_class.eos_token_id
         self.model = PolicyAndValueWrapper(self.policy_model, self.value_model)
         self.model.config = self.policy_model.config  # needed for pushing to hub
         self.create_optimizer_and_scheduler(
@@ -449,9 +455,9 @@ def repeat_generator():
 
                     # Response Processing 1. truncate response after the first occurrence of `stop_token_id`
                     postprocessed_response = response
-                    if args.stop_token_id is not None:  # handle the edge case when stop_token_id exists but is 0
+                    if self.stop_token_id is not None:  # handle the edge case when stop_token_id exists but is 0
                         postprocessed_response = truncate_response(
-                            args.stop_token_id, processing_class.pad_token_id, response
+                            self.stop_token_id, processing_class.pad_token_id, response
                         )
 
                     # Response Processing 2. run reward model on the truncated responses
@@ -706,9 +712,9 @@ def generate_completions(self, sampling: bool = False):
                     )
                     response = query_response[:, context_length:]
                     postprocessed_response = response
-                    if args.stop_token_id is not None:  # handle the edge case when stop_token_id exists but is 0
+                    if self.stop_token_id is not None:  # handle the edge case when stop_token_id exists but is 0
                         postprocessed_response = truncate_response(
-                            args.stop_token_id, processing_class.pad_token_id, response
+                            self.stop_token_id, processing_class.pad_token_id, response
                         )
                     table["query"].extend(
                         gather_object(processing_class.batch_decode(query, skip_special_tokens=True))
diff --git a/trl/trainer/utils.py b/trl/trainer/utils.py
index 1228dc7ece..719d952f1f 100644
--- a/trl/trainer/utils.py
+++ b/trl/trainer/utils.py
@@ -993,9 +993,15 @@ class OnPolicyConfig(TrainingArguments):
         response_length (`int`, *optional*, defaults to `53`):
             Length of the response.
         stop_token (`str` or `None`, *optional*, defaults to `None`):
-            Stop token.
+            Specifies the stop token to use for text generation. This parameter is mutually exclusive with
+            `stop_token_id`.
+
+            - `None`: No stop token is applied, unless `stop_token_id` is specified.
+            - `'eos'`: Uses the tokenizer's `eos_token`.
+
         stop_token_id (`int` or `None`, *optional*, defaults to `None`):
-            Truncation token id.
+            Specifies the ID of the stop token to use for text generation. If `None`, no stop token ID is applied,
+            unless `stop_token` is specified. This parameter is mutually exclusive with `stop_token`.
         temperature (`float`, *optional*, defaults to `0.7`):
             Sampling temperature.
         missing_eos_penalty (`float` or `None`, *optional*, defaults to `None`):
@@ -1054,11 +1060,17 @@ class OnPolicyConfig(TrainingArguments):
     )
     stop_token: Optional[Literal["eos"]] = field(
         default=None,
-        metadata={"help": "Stop token."},
+        metadata={
+            "help": "Specifies the stop token to use for text generation. This parameter is mutually exclusive with "
+            "`stop_token_id`."
+        },
     )
     stop_token_id: Optional[int] = field(
         default=None,
-        metadata={"help": "Truncation token id."},
+        metadata={
+            "help": "Specifies the ID of the stop token to use for text generation. If `None`, no stop token ID is "
+            "applied, unless `stop_token` is specified. This parameter is mutually exclusive with `stop_token`."
+        },
     )
     temperature: float = field(
         default=0.7,