diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 842526511e74e..f644071b8191b 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -16,13 +16,13 @@ Hi! Thanks for checking out Julia. If you have questions or problems, the [Julia
 
 The Julia team uses [GitHub issues](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues) to track and discuss problems, feature requests, and pull requests. By contributing code to Julia, you are agreeing to release it under the [MIT License](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/tree/master/LICENSE.md).
 
-You can make pull requests for incomplete features to get code review, in which case we have a convention of prefixing the pull request title with "RFC:" to indicate that the work is incomplete so it doesn't accidentally get merged into the master branch before it's baked.
+You can make pull requests for incomplete features to get code review, in which case we have a convention of prefixing the pull request title with "RFC:" to indicate that the work is incomplete so it doesn't accidentally get merged into the master branch before it's ready.
 
-Before submitting, make sure that all tests pass by running `make testall`. Even better, add your own tests for your change or feature to the test files in `tests/`. If your contribution includes changes to Makefiles or external dependencies, make sure you can build Julia from a clean tree using `git clean -fdx` or equivalent.
+Before submitting, make sure that all tests pass by running `make testall`. Even better, add your own tests for your change or feature to the test files in `tests/`. If your contribution includes changes to Makefiles or external dependencies, make sure you can build Julia from a clean tree using `git clean -fdx` or equivalent (be careful – this command will delete any files lying around that aren't checked into git).
 
 ## Getting help
 
-While getting familiar with Julia and using unfamiliar aspects of the language, remember to check out [the docs](http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/) and keep in mind that they are [searchable](http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/search/). (If you use a script blocker then you'll have to unblock that page.) The [source code](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia) is an excellent source of examples (and it's mostly pretty approachable). If you're still stumped, post something on [the dev list](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/julia-dev), but you may want to search the archives first to see if there's already been a discussion about what you're stuck on.
+While getting familiar with Julia, remember to check out [the docs](http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/), keeping in mind that they are [searchable](http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/search/). (If you use a script blocker then you'll have to unblock that page.) The [source code](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia) is an excellent source of examples (and it's mostly pretty approachable). If you're still stumped, post something on [the dev list](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/julia-dev), but you may want to search the archives first to see if there's already been a discussion about what you're stuck on.
 
 ## Resources