diff --git a/Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting.rst b/Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting.rst
index 0dd54bbe4afa..1addb0c374a4 100644
--- a/Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting.rst
+++ b/Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting.rst
@@ -34,7 +34,8 @@ The Linux kernel supports the following overcommit handling modes
 The overcommit policy is set via the sysctl ``vm.overcommit_memory``.
 
 The overcommit amount can be set via ``vm.overcommit_ratio`` (percentage)
-or ``vm.overcommit_kbytes`` (absolute value).
+or ``vm.overcommit_kbytes`` (absolute value). These only have an effect
+when ``vm.overcommit_memory`` is set to 2.
 
 The current overcommit limit and amount committed are viewable in
 ``/proc/meminfo`` as CommitLimit and Committed_AS respectively.