diff --git a/man3/basename.3 b/man3/basename.3
index 1032378e7..b400ac813 100644
--- a/man3/basename.3
+++ b/man3/basename.3
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@
 .\"
 .TH DIRNAME 3  2000-12-14 "GNU" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
 .SH NAME
-dirname, basename \- Parse pathname components
+dirname, basename \- parse pathname components
 .SH SYNOPSIS
 .nf
 .B #include <libgen.h>
@@ -83,17 +83,17 @@ and
 .BR basename ()
 may modify the contents of 
 .IR path , 
-so a copy should be passed when calling one of these functions.
-(Because either function may return a pointer to some part of
-.IR path ,
-the copy should not be freed until the pointer returned by
-the function is no longer required.)
-Furthermore, 
-.BR dirname ()
-and
-.BR basename ()
-may return pointers to statically allocated memory
+so it may be desirable to pass a copy when calling one of 
+these functions.
+.PP
+These functions may return pointers to statically allocated memory
 which may be overwritten by subsequent calls.
+Alternatively, they may return a pointer to some part of
+.IR path ,
+so that the string referred to by
+.I path
+should not be modified or freed until the pointer returned by
+the function is no longer required.
 .PP
 The following list of examples (taken from SUSv2)
 shows the strings returned by