diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.rst b/CONTRIBUTING.rst
index 132fcba7..50a353e3 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.rst
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.rst
@@ -70,7 +70,7 @@ Ready to contribute? Here's how to set up `xscen` for local development.
     $ mamba env create -f environment-dev.yml
     $ pip install -e .
 
-3. As xscen was installed in editable mode, we also need to compile the translation catalogs manuall:
+3. As xscen was installed in editable mode, we also need to compile the translation catalogs manually:
 
     $ make translate
 
@@ -120,13 +120,13 @@ Ready to contribute? Here's how to set up `xscen` for local development.
 
 Translating xscen
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-If your additions to xscen play with plain text dataset attributes like "long_name" or "description", you should also provide
-french translations for those fields. To manage translations, xscen uses python's `gettext` with the help of `babel`.
+If your additions to xscen play with plain text attributes like "long_name" or "description", you should also provide
+French translations for those fields. To manage translations, xscen uses python's `gettext` with the help of `babel`.
 
 To update an attribute while enabling translation, use py:func:`utils.add_attr` instead of a normal set-item. For example:
 
 .. code python
-    ds.attrs['description'] = "The english description"
+    ds.attrs['description'] = "The English description"
 
 becomes
 
@@ -138,14 +138,14 @@ becomes
 
     add_attr(ds, "description", _("English description of {a}"), a="var")
 
-See also :py:func:`update_attr` for the special case where an attribute is updated using the previous version.
+See also :py:func:`update_attr` for the special case where an attribute is updated using its previous version.
 
-Once the code is implemented and translatable strings marked as such, we need to extract them and catalog them
-in the french translation map. From the root directory of xscen, run::
+Once the code is implemented and translatable strings are marked as such, we need to extract them and catalog them
+in the French translation map. From the root directory of xscen, run::
 
     $ make findfrench
 
-Then go edit ``xscen/xscen/data/fr/LC_MESSAGES/xscen.po`` with the correct french translations. Finally, running::
+Then go edit ``xscen/xscen/data/fr/LC_MESSAGES/xscen.po`` with the correct French translations. Finally, running::
 
     $ make translate
 
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index fe2453b8..c57529b3 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -90,7 +90,7 @@ dist: clean ## builds source and wheel package
 install: clean ## install the package to the active Python's site-packages
 	python setup.py install
 
-findfrench:  ## Extract phrases and update the french translation catalog (this doesn't translate)
+findfrench:  ## Extract phrases and update the French translation catalog (this doesn't translate)
 	python setup.py extract_messages
 	python setup.py update_catalog -l fr
 
diff --git a/docs/goodtoknow.rst b/docs/goodtoknow.rst
index 797db229..f92c5471 100644
--- a/docs/goodtoknow.rst
+++ b/docs/goodtoknow.rst
@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ What is currently not covered by either `xscen` or `xclim` is a method to resamp
 Metadata translation
 --------------------
 
-xscen itself does not add many translatable attributes, but when it does it will look into xclim's options for which locales to translate them too. In a config file, activating french translation for xclim's indicators but also for xscen is done with :
+xscen itself does not add many translatable attributes, but when it does, it will look into xclim's options for which locales to translate them to. In a config file, activating French translations for both xclim's indicators and xscen is done with :
 
 .. code-block:: yaml
 
@@ -56,12 +56,12 @@ xscen itself does not add many translatable attributes, but when it does it will
 		metadata_locales:
 		  - fr
 
-Note that this only applies to attributes that are added to a dataset. Some xscen functions will only update an attribute. For example, when calculating the climatology of a variable with `long_name` `Mean temperature`, :py:func:`climatological_mean` will update the `long_name` as `30-year average of Mean temperature`. This automatic update is done for all locales available in the variable, no matter what xclim option is activated.
+Note that this only applies to attributes that are added to a dataset. Some xscen functions will instead update an existing attribute. For example, when calculating the climatology of a variable with `long_name` `Mean temperature`, :py:func:`climatological_mean` will update the `long_name` as `30-year average of Mean temperature`. This automatic update is done for all locales available in the variable, no matter what xclim option is activated.
 
-Module wide options
+Module-wide options
 -------------------
 
-As seen above, it can be useful to use the "special" sections of the config file to set some module wide options. For example:
+As seen above, it can be useful to use the "special" sections of the config file to set some module-wide options. For example:
 
 .. code-block:: yaml
 
diff --git a/xscen/utils.py b/xscen/utils.py
index 28418e3c..38723448 100644
--- a/xscen/utils.py
+++ b/xscen/utils.py
@@ -64,7 +64,7 @@
 
 
 def update_attr(ds, attr, new, others=None, **fmt):
-    """Format a dataset attribute referencing itself in a translatable way.
+    """Format an attribute referencing itself in a translatable way.
 
     Parameters
     ----------