diff --git a/Doc/using/cmdline.rst b/Doc/using/cmdline.rst
index 540e4d7..0978770 100644
--- a/Doc/using/cmdline.rst
+++ b/Doc/using/cmdline.rst
@@ -232,8 +232,9 @@
 
 .. cmdoption:: -u
 
-   Force stdin, stdout and stderr to be totally unbuffered.  On systems where it
-   matters, also put stdin, stdout and stderr in binary mode.
+   Force the binary layer of the stdin, stdout and stderr streams (which is
+   available as their ``buffer`` attribute) to be unbuffered.  The text I/O
+   layer will still be line-buffered.
 
    See also :envvar:`PYTHONUNBUFFERED`.
 
diff --git a/Misc/python.man b/Misc/python.man
index 9a406a8..b96c860 100644
--- a/Misc/python.man
+++ b/Misc/python.man
@@ -165,12 +165,12 @@
 that it entails.
 .TP
 .B \-u
-Force stdin, stdout and stderr to be totally unbuffered.  On systems
-where it matters, also put stdin, stdout and stderr in binary mode.
-Note that there is internal buffering in readlines() and
-file-object iterators ("for line in sys.stdin") which is not
-influenced by this option.  To work around this, you will want to use
-"sys.stdin.readline()" inside a "while 1:" loop.
+Force the binary I/O layers of stdin, stdout and stderr to be unbuffered.
+The text I/O layer will still be line-buffered.
+.\" Note that there is internal buffering in readlines() and
+.\" file-object iterators ("for line in sys.stdin") which is not
+.\" influenced by this option.  To work around this, you will want to use
+.\" "sys.stdin.readline()" inside a "while 1:" loop.
 .TP
 .B \-v
 Print a message each time a module is initialized, showing the place