diff --git a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/resources/hdfs-default.xml b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/resources/hdfs-default.xml
index 96c04f0ba4e..4caee9e76f8 100644
--- a/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/resources/hdfs-default.xml
+++ b/hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/src/main/resources/hdfs-default.xml
@@ -1811,8 +1811,8 @@
   <name>dfs.namenode.stale.datanode.interval</name>
   <value>30000</value>
   <description>
-    Default time interval for marking a datanode as "stale", i.e., if 
-    the namenode has not received heartbeat msg from a datanode for 
+    Default time interval in milliseconds for marking a datanode as "stale",
+    i.e., if the namenode has not received heartbeat msg from a datanode for
     more than this time interval, the datanode will be marked and treated 
     as "stale" by default. The stale interval cannot be too small since 
     otherwise this may cause too frequent change of stale states.