diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst
index 9bb8b72..f295e7b 100644
--- a/README.rst
+++ b/README.rst
@@ -1,16 +1,15 @@
-
 HappyBase
 =========
 
-**HappyBase** is a developer-friendly `Python <http://python.org/>`_ library to
-interact with `Apache HBase <http://hbase.apache.org/>`_.
+**HappyBase** is a developer-friendly Python_ library to interact with Apache
+HBase_.
 
-External links:
-
-* `Documentation <http://happybase.readthedocs.org/>`_ (readthedocs.org)
+* `Documentation <http://happybase.readthedocs.org/>`_ (Read the Docs)
 * `Downloads <http://pypi.python.org/pypi/happybase/>`_ (PyPI)
 * `Source code <https://github.com/wbolster/happybase>`_ (Github)
 
+.. _Python: http://python.org/
+.. _HBase: http://hbase.apache.org/
 
 .. If you're reading this from the README.rst file in a source tree,
    you can generate the HTML documentation by running "make doc" and browsing
diff --git a/doc/tutorial.rst b/doc/tutorial.rst
index fb9f74a..d90ef3c 100644
--- a/doc/tutorial.rst
+++ b/doc/tutorial.rst
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ Opening a connection
 ====================
 
 We'll get started by connecting to HBase. Just create a new
-:py:class:`Connection`::
+:py:class:`Connection` instance::
 
    import happybase
 
@@ -32,8 +32,8 @@ sure HappyBase speaks the correct wire protocol to HBase::
 
    connection = happybase.Connection('somehost', compat='0.90')
 
-When a :py:class:`Connection` instance is created, it automatically opens a
-socket connection to the HBase Thrift server. This behaviour can be disabled by
+When a :py:class:`Connection` is created, it automatically opens a socket
+connection to the HBase Thrift server. This behaviour can be disabled by
 setting the `autoconnect` argument to `False`, and opening the connection
 manually using :py:meth:`Connection.open`::