diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors/chapter.xml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors/chapter.xml
index 28067babca..9a038a24e1 100644
--- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors/chapter.xml
+++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors/chapter.xml
@@ -595,9 +595,18 @@
     <sect2 id="svn-usage">
       <title>Running <application>Subversion</application></title>
 
-      <para>The <command>svn</command> command can be used to fetch a
-	clean copy of the sources from a given repository by
-	typing:</para>
+      <para>The <command>svn</command> command is used to fetch a
+	clean copy of the sources into a local directory.</para>
+      <warning>
+	<para>If the local directory already exists but was not
+	  created by <command>svn</command>, rename or delete it
+	  before the checkout.  Checkout over an existing
+	  non-<command>svn</command> directory can cause conflicts
+	  between the existing files and those brought in from the
+	  repository.</para>
+      </warning>
+
+      <para>Check out from a given repository by typing:</para>
 
       <screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>svn checkout <literal>svn://svn.FreeBSD.org/<replaceable>repository</replaceable>/<replaceable>branch</replaceable></literal> <replaceable>root</replaceable></userinput></screen>
 
@@ -606,7 +615,7 @@
       <itemizedlist>
 	<listitem>
 	  <para><replaceable>repository</replaceable> is one of the
-	    Project repositories, i.e.  <literal>base</literal>,
+	    Project repositories, i.e., <literal>base</literal>,
 	    <literal>ports</literal>, or <literal>doc</literal>.</para>
 	</listitem>