diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/pg_dump.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/pg_dump.sgml
index fd4ecf01a0a..5ac3f3e8510 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/pg_dump.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/pg_dump.sgml
@@ -297,8 +297,8 @@ PostgreSQL documentation
         file based output formats, in which case the standard output is used.
         It must be given for the directory output format however, where it
         specifies the target directory instead of a file. In this case the
-        directory is created by <command>pg_dump</command> and must not exist
-        before.
+        directory is created by <command>pg_dump</command> unless the directory
+        exist and is empty.
        </para>
       </listitem>
      </varlistentry>