diff --git a/documentation/dev-manual/dev-manual-common-tasks.xml b/documentation/dev-manual/dev-manual-common-tasks.xml
index c5ff3b29b5..3ee327c54d 100644
--- a/documentation/dev-manual/dev-manual-common-tasks.xml
+++ b/documentation/dev-manual/dev-manual-common-tasks.xml
@@ -1633,7 +1633,7 @@
                     <listitem><para><emphasis><filename>LICENSE</filename>:</emphasis>
                         This variable specifies the license for the software.
                         If you do not know the license under which the software
-                        you are building is distributed, you can go to the
+                        you are building is distributed, you should go to the
                         source code and look for that information.
                         Typical files containing this information include
                         <filename>COPYING</filename>,
@@ -1641,17 +1641,16 @@
                         <filename>README</filename> files.
                         You could also find the information near the top of
                         a source file.
-                        The key is to find something that states the public
-                        license needed for the software.
                         For example, given a piece of software licensed under
                         the GNU General Public License version 2, you would
                         set <filename>LICENSE</filename> as follows:
                         <literallayout class='monospaced'>
      LICENSE = "GPLv2"
                         </literallayout></para>
-                        <para>The licenses you specify with
-                        <filename>LICENSE</filename> be any name as long as
-                        you do not use spaces.
+                        <para>The licenses you specify within
+                        <filename>LICENSE</filename> can have any name as long
+                        as you do not use spaces, since spaces are used as
+                        separators between license names.
                         For standard licenses, use the names of the files in
                         <filename>meta/files/common-licenses/</filename>
                         or the <filename>SPDXLICENSEMAP</filename> flag names