diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/alter_table.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/alter_table.sgml
index 0bfe88cf54..61409861cf 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/alter_table.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/alter_table.sgml
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
@@ -60,7 +60,15 @@ ALTER TABLE table table
- The name (possibly schema-qualified) of an existing table to alter.
+ The name (possibly schema-qualified) of an existing table to
+ alter. If ONLY> is specified, only that table is
+ altered. If ONLY> is not specified, the table and all
+ its descendant tables (if any) are updated. *> can be
+ appended to the table name to indicate that descendant tables are
+ to be scanned, but in the current version, this is the default
+ behavior. (In releases before 7.1, ONLY> was the
+ default behavior.) The default can be altered by changing the
+ configuration option.
diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/select.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/select.sgml
index a1970c3e88..7a696491a6 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/select.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/select.sgml
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
@@ -131,7 +131,9 @@ where from_item can be:
tables (if any) are scanned. *> can be appended to the
table name to indicate that descendant tables are to be scanned, but
in the current version, this is the default behavior. (In releases
- before 7.1, ONLY> was the default behavior.)
+ before 7.1, ONLY> was the default behavior.) The
+ default behavior can be modified by changing the
+ configuration option.
diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/update.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/update.sgml
index 439e11be4b..3825be5bc1 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/update.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/update.sgml
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
@@ -40,7 +40,15 @@ UPDATE [ ONLY ] table SET table
- The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing table.
+ The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing table. If
+ ONLY> is specified, only that table is updated. If
+ ONLY> is not specified, the table and all its
+ descendant tables (if any) are updated. *> can be
+ appended to the table name to indicate that descendant tables are
+ to be scanned, but in the current version, this is the default
+ behavior. (In releases before 7.1, ONLY> was the
+ default behavior.) The default can be altered by changing the
+ configuration option.