diff --git a/doc/emacs/maintaining.texi b/doc/emacs/maintaining.texi
index edc5acbd65d..e5b3664a4cc 100644
--- a/doc/emacs/maintaining.texi
+++ b/doc/emacs/maintaining.texi
@@ -2826,6 +2826,13 @@ place of a file name on the command line.  @command{etags} will read from
 standard input and mark the produced tags as belonging to the file
 @var{file}.
 
+  For C and C++, if the source files don't observe the GNU Coding
+Standards' convention if having braces (@samp{@{} and @samp{@}}) in
+column zero only for top-level definitions, like functions and
+@code{struct} definitions, we advise that you use the
+@samp{--ignore-indentation} option, to prevent @command{etags} from
+incorrectly interpreting closing braces in column zero.
+
   @samp{etags --help} outputs the list of the languages @command{etags}
 knows, and the file name rules for guessing the language.  It also prints
 a list of all the available @command{etags} options, together with a short
diff --git a/doc/man/etags.1 b/doc/man/etags.1
index d345b8bd73f..96781569fc2 100644
--- a/doc/man/etags.1
+++ b/doc/man/etags.1
@@ -122,7 +122,9 @@ current file.  Only \fBetags\fP accepts this option.
 .B \-I, \-\-ignore\-indentation
 Don't rely on indentation as much as we normally do.  Currently, this
 means not to assume that a closing brace in the first column is the
-final brace of a function or structure definition in C and C++.
+final brace of a function or structure definition in C and C++.  This
+is important for code that doesn't observe the GNU Coding conventions
+of placing only top-level braces in column zero.
 .TP
 \fB\-l\fP \fIlanguage\fP, \fB\-\-language=\fIlanguage\fP
 Parse the following files according to the given language.  More than