diff --git a/MANUAL.txt b/MANUAL.txt
index 29fde9168..77ca471c5 100644
--- a/MANUAL.txt
+++ b/MANUAL.txt
@@ -3931,6 +3931,10 @@ ordinary HTML (without bird tracks).
 writes HTML with the Haskell code in bird tracks, so it can be copied
 and pasted as literate Haskell source.
 
+Note that GHC expects the bird tracks in the first column, so indentend literate
+code blocks (e.g. inside an itemized environment) will not be picked up by the
+Haskell compiler.
+
 Syntax highlighting
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