diff --git a/docs/topics/testing/tools.txt b/docs/topics/testing/tools.txt
index 065c2a110e..3a15613bff 100644
--- a/docs/topics/testing/tools.txt
+++ b/docs/topics/testing/tools.txt
@@ -1404,7 +1404,7 @@ your test suite.
 .. method:: SimpleTestCase.assertNotContains(response, text, status_code=200, msg_prefix='', html=False)
 
     Asserts that a ``Response`` instance produced the given ``status_code`` and
-    that ``text`` does not appears in the content of the response.
+    that ``text`` does *not* appear in the content of the response.
 
     Set ``html`` to ``True`` to handle ``text`` as HTML. The comparison with
     the response content will be based on HTML semantics instead of