diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index c617dca4c..b36ecb976 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Changes in release 0.4a
 
  * corrected key used for checksum in mk_safe, unfortunately this
-   makes it backwards incomp
+   makes it backwards incompatible
 
  * update to autoconf 2.50, libtool 1.4