diff --git a/docs/syndication_feeds.txt b/docs/syndication_feeds.txt
index a64914de3f..0b402d0195 100644
--- a/docs/syndication_feeds.txt
+++ b/docs/syndication_feeds.txt
@@ -114,6 +114,10 @@ Note:
       `object-relational mapper`_, ``items()`` doesn't have to return model
       instances. Although you get a few bits of functionality "for free" by
       using Django models, ``items()`` can return any type of object you want.
+    * If you are creating an Atom feed, rather than the default RSS feed, you
+      will want to set the ``subtitle`` attribute instead of the
+      ``description`` attribute. See `Publishing Atom and RSS feeds in
+      tandem`_, later, for an example.
 
 One thing's left to do. In an RSS feed, each ``<item>`` has a ``<title>``,
 ``<link>`` and ``<description>``. We need to tell the framework what data to
@@ -318,6 +322,16 @@ Here's a full example::
 
     class AtomSiteNewsFeed(RssSiteNewsFeed):
         feed_type = Atom1Feed
+        subtitle = description
+
+.. Note::
+    In Atom feeds, there is no feed-level description element. There *is* a
+    subtitle element, however. Your RSS feed description may be too verbose
+    for a subtitle, so Django does not automatically put the feed description
+    into the subtitle element. Instead, you should create a ``subtitle``
+    attribute in your model, containing an appropriate string. In the above
+    example, we have used the RSS feed's description, since it is quite short
+    already.
 
 And the accompanying URLconf::