diff --git a/changelog/unreleased/issue-233 b/changelog/unreleased/issue-233
index a1f9aa022..a27af1db2 100644
--- a/changelog/unreleased/issue-233
+++ b/changelog/unreleased/issue-233
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 Enhancement: Add negative patterns for include/exclude
 
-If a pattern is suffixed by an exclamation mark and match a file that
+If a pattern is prefixed by an exclamation mark and match a file that
 was previously matched by a regular pattern, the match is cancelled.
 Notably, this can be used with `--exclude-file` to cancel the
 exclusion of some files.
diff --git a/doc/040_backup.rst b/doc/040_backup.rst
index fa19a176b..ba297dc7f 100644
--- a/doc/040_backup.rst
+++ b/doc/040_backup.rst
@@ -289,7 +289,7 @@ On most Unixy shells, you can either quote or use backslashes. For example:
  * ``--exclude="foo bar star/foo.txt"``
  * ``--exclude=foo\ bar\ star/foo.txt``
 
-If a pattern is suffixed by an exclamation mark and match a file that
+If a pattern is prefixed by an exclamation mark and match a file that
 was previously matched by a regular pattern, the match is cancelled.
 It works similarly to ``gitignore``, with the same limitation: once a
 directory is excluded, it is not possible to include files inside the