diff --git a/Documentation/user-manual.txt b/Documentation/user-manual.txt
index c53cf814f0..cc592579fe 100644
--- a/Documentation/user-manual.txt
+++ b/Documentation/user-manual.txt
@@ -1793,7 +1793,7 @@ $ git pull . branch
 $ git merge branch
 -------------------------------------------------
 
-are roughly equivalent.  The former is actually very commonly used.
+are roughly equivalent.
 
 [[submitting-patches]]
 Submitting patches to a project
@@ -2255,11 +2255,11 @@ commit to this branch.
 $ ... patch ... test  ... commit [ ... patch ... test ... commit ]*
 -------------------------------------------------
 
-When you are happy with the state of this change, you can pull it into the
+When you are happy with the state of this change, you can merge it into the
 "test" branch in preparation to make it public:
 
 -------------------------------------------------
-$ git checkout test && git pull . speed-up-spinlocks
+$ git checkout test && git merge speed-up-spinlocks
 -------------------------------------------------
 
 It is unlikely that you would have any conflicts here ... but you might if you
@@ -2271,7 +2271,7 @@ see the value of keeping each patch (or patch series) in its own branch.  It
 means that the patches can be moved into the `release` tree in any order.
 
 -------------------------------------------------
-$ git checkout release && git pull . speed-up-spinlocks
+$ git checkout release && git merge speed-up-spinlocks
 -------------------------------------------------
 
 After a while, you will have a number of branches, and despite the