diff --git a/src/doc/user/usermanual.sgml b/src/doc/user/usermanual.sgml
index d5432611..13b7cad3 100644
--- a/src/doc/user/usermanual.sgml
+++ b/src/doc/user/usermanual.sgml
@@ -135,29 +135,46 @@
       different character sets, encodings, and languages into the same
       index. It has input filters for many document types.</para>
       
-      <para>Stemming depends on the document language. &RCL; stores
-      the unstemmed versions of terms and uses auxiliary databases for
-      term expansion. It can switch stemming languages, or add a
-      language, without re-indexing.  Storing documents in different
-      languages in the same index is possible, and useful in
-      practice, but does introduce possibilities of confusion. &RCL;
-      currently makes no attempt at automatic language recognition.</para>
+      <para>Stemming is the process by which &RCL; reduces words to
+      their radicals so that searching does not depend, for example,
+      on a word being singular or plural (floor, floors), or on a verb
+      tense (flooring, floored). Because the mechanisms used for
+      stemming depend on the specific grammatical rules for each
+      language, there is a separate stemmer module for most common
+      languages where stemming makes sense. Storing documents written
+      in different languages in the same index is possible, and
+      commonly done. In this situation, you can specify several
+      stemming languages for the index. &RCL; stores the unstemmed
+      versions of terms in the main index and uses auxiliary databases
+      for term expansion (one for each stemming language), which means
+      that you can switch stemming languages between searches, or add
+      a language without needing a full reindex. &RCL; currently
+      makes no attempt at automatic language recognition, which means
+      that the stemmer will sometimes be applied to terms from other
+      languages with potentially strange results. In practise, even if
+      this introduces possibilities of confusion, this approach has
+      been proven quite useful, and, awaiting the addition of an
+      automatic language recognition module to &RCL;, it is much less
+      cumbersome than separating your documents according to what
+      language they are written in.</para>
 
       <para>&RCL; has many parameters which define exactly what to
-        index, and how to classify and decode the source documents. These
-        are kept in <link linkend="rcl.indexing.config">configuration
-        files</link>. A default configuration is copied into a standard
-        location (usually something like
-        <filename>/usr/[local/]share/recoll/examples</filename>) during
-        installation. The default parameters from this file may be
-        overridden by values that you set inside your personal
-        configuration, found by default in the <filename>.recoll</filename>
-        sub-directory of your home directory. The default configuration
-        will index your home directory with default parameters and should
-        be sufficient for giving &RCL; a try, but you may want to adjust it
-        later, which can be done either by editing the text files or by
-        using configuration menus in the <command>recoll</command>
-        GUI</para>
+        index, and how to classify and decode the source
+        documents. These are kept in <link
+        linkend="rcl.indexing.config">configuration files</link>. A
+        default configuration is copied into a standard location
+        (usually something like
+        <filename>/usr/[local/]share/recoll/examples</filename>)
+        during installation. The default values set by the
+        configuration files in this directory may be overridden by
+        values that you set inside your personal configuration, found
+        by default in the <filename>.recoll</filename> sub-directory
+        of your home directory.  The default configuration will index
+        your home directory with default parameters and should be
+        sufficient for giving &RCL; a try, but you may want to adjust
+        it later, which can be done either by editing the text files
+        or by using configuration menus in the
+        <command>recoll</command> GUI</para>
 
       <para><link linkend="rcl.indexing.periodic.exec">Indexing</link>
       is started automatically the first time you execute the