diff --git a/Doc/library/tarfile.rst b/Doc/library/tarfile.rst
--- a/Doc/library/tarfile.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/tarfile.rst
@@ -19,8 +19,8 @@
 
 Some facts and figures:
 
-* reads and writes gzip'ed (if the :mod:`gzip` module is available) and bzip2'ed
-  (using the :mod:`bz2` module) compressed archives.
+* reads and writes :mod:`gzip` and :mod:`bz2` compressed archives depending on
+  the availability of the respective modules.
 
 * read/write support for the POSIX.1-1988 (ustar) format.
 
@@ -199,7 +199,7 @@
       Documentation of the :mod:`zipfile` standard module.
 
    :ref:`archiving-operations`
-      Documentation of the higer-level archiving facilities provided by the
+      Documentation of the higher-level archiving facilities provided by the
       standard :mod:`shutil` module.
 
    `GNU tar manual, Basic Tar Format <http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Standard.html>`_