diff --git a/docs/contributing.rst b/docs/contributing.rst
index f4bc769..184ba21 100644
--- a/docs/contributing.rst
+++ b/docs/contributing.rst
@@ -60,11 +60,11 @@
 philosophy: "make it hard to do insecure things". Here are a few strategies for
 API design which should be both followed, and should inspire other API choices:
 
-If a user will need to compare a user provided value with a computed value (for
-example, checking a signature on something), there should be an API provided
-which performs the check for the user in a secure way (for example, using a
-constant time comparison), rather than requiring the user to perform the
-comparison themselves.
+If it is necessary to compare a user provided value with a computed value (for
+example, verifying a signature), there should be an API provided which performs
+the verification in a secure way (for example, using a constant time
+comparison), rather than requiring the user to perform the comparison
+themselves.
 
 If it is incorrect to ignore the result of a method, it should raise an
 exception, and not return a boolean ``True``/``False`` flag. For example, a