diff -r 136adbcefa5f Doc/library/tarfile.rst
--- a/Doc/library/tarfile.rst	Sun Jan 03 18:00:31 2016 -0800
+++ b/Doc/library/tarfile.rst	Tue Jan 05 00:44:26 2016 +0530
@@ -101,7 +101,7 @@
 
    For modes ``'w:gz'``, ``'r:gz'``, ``'w:bz2'``, ``'r:bz2'``, ``'x:gz'``,
    ``'x:bz2'``, :func:`tarfile.open` accepts the keyword argument
-   *compresslevel* to specify the compression level of the file.
+   *compresslevel* (default ``9``) to specify the compression level of the file.
 
    For special purposes, there is a second format for *mode*:
    ``'filemode|[compression]'``.  :func:`tarfile.open` will return a :class:`TarFile`