diff --git a/hledger/Hledger/Cli/Commands/Balance.txt b/hledger/Hledger/Cli/Commands/Balance.txt
index bfde0e010..dab9261e9 100644
--- a/hledger/Hledger/Cli/Commands/Balance.txt
+++ b/hledger/Hledger/Cli/Commands/Balance.txt
@@ -258,9 +258,9 @@ accounts yet.
 
 Data layout
 
-With --layout, you can influence how amounts with more than one
-commodity are displayed (and a bit more), which in turn affects the
-layout of the report data:
+The --layout option affects how multi-commodity amounts are displayed,
+and some other things, influencing the overall layout of the report
+data:
 
 -   --layout=wide[,WIDTH]: commodities are shown on a single line,
     possibly elided to the specified width
@@ -268,7 +268,9 @@ layout of the report data:
 -   --layout=bare: amounts are shown as bare numbers, with commodity
     symbols in a separate column
 -   --layout=tidy: data is normalised to tidy form, with one row per
-    data value (supported with CSV output only)
+    data value. This is supported with CSV output format only. Totals
+    and row averages are disabled in this mode (-N/--no-total is implied
+    and -T/--row-total and -A/--average will be ignored).
 
 These --layout values affect some but not all of the output formats, as
 shown: