diff --git a/README b/README
index 0c128a9de..6f70dcfb8 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -86,7 +86,7 @@ you want to make changes to the system (which we encourage!) you will
 find it helpful to have the tools we use to develop Guile.  They
 are the following:
 
-Autoconf 2.12 --- a system for automatically generate `configure'
+Autoconf 2.12 --- a system for automatically generating `configure'
 	scripts from templates which list the non-portable features a
 	program would like to use.  Available in
 	"ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu".