diff --git a/man5/passwd.5 b/man5/passwd.5
index c2da9564a..855e83516 100644
--- a/man5/passwd.5
+++ b/man5/passwd.5
@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ hardware was too slow to crack a well-chosen password, and moreover the
 basic assumption used to be that of a friendly user-community.
 These days many people run some version of the shadow password suite, where
 .I /etc/passwd
-has asterisks (*) instead of encrypted passwords,
+has an \(aqx\(aq character in the password field,
 and the encrypted passwords are in
 .IR /etc/shadow ,
 which is readable by the superuser only.