diff --git a/lib/matplotlib/__init__.py b/lib/matplotlib/__init__.py
index ce52abc67663..9a6449715854 100644
--- a/lib/matplotlib/__init__.py
+++ b/lib/matplotlib/__init__.py
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 """
-This is an object-orient plotting library.
+This is an object-oriented plotting library.
 
 A procedural interface is provided by the companion pyplot module,
 which may be imported directly, e.g::