diff --git a/Documentation/git-filter-branch.txt b/Documentation/git-filter-branch.txt
index a530fef7e5..40ba4aa3e6 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-filter-branch.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-filter-branch.txt
@@ -467,9 +467,9 @@ impossible for a backward-compatible implementation to ever be fast:
 
 * In editing files, git-filter-branch by design checks out each and
   every commit as it existed in the original repo.  If your repo has
-  10\^5 files and 10\^5 commits, but each commit only modifies 5
-  files, then git-filter-branch will make you do 10\^10 modifications,
-  despite only having (at most) 5*10^5 unique blobs.
+  `10^5` files and `10^5` commits, but each commit only modifies five
+  files, then git-filter-branch will make you do `10^10` modifications,
+  despite only having (at most) `5*10^5` unique blobs.
 
 * If you try and cheat and try to make git-filter-branch only work on
   files modified in a commit, then two things happen