diff --git a/docs/getting_started.rst b/docs/getting_started.rst
index afea8c01..7a7eadfb 100644
--- a/docs/getting_started.rst
+++ b/docs/getting_started.rst
@@ -220,16 +220,17 @@ is not specified and DEFAULT_DATE is 'fs', Pelican will rely on the file's
 the file resides. For example, a file located at ``python/foobar/myfoobar.rst`` 
 will have a category of ``foobar``.
 
-Note that, aside from the title, none of this metadata is mandatory: if the
-date is not specified, Pelican can rely on the file's "mtime" timestamp through
-the ``DEFAULT_DATE`` setting, and the category can be determined by the
-directory in which the file resides. For example, a file located at
-``python/foobar/myfoobar.rst`` will have a category of ``foobar``. If you would
-like to organize your files in other ways where the name of the subfolder would
-not be a good category name, you can set the setting ``USE_FOLDER_AS_CATEGORY``
-to ``False``. If there is no summary metadata for a given post, the
-``SUMMARY_MAX_LENGTH`` setting can be used to specify how many words from the
-beginning of an article are used as the summary.
+Note that, aside from the title and date, none of this metadata is mandatory.
+If the date is not specified and you have ``DEFAULT_DATE`` set, Pelican will
+use that instead, making the ``date`` metadata attribute optional. The category
+can be determined by the directory in which the file resides. For example, a
+file located at ``python/foobar/myfoobar.rst`` will have a category of
+``foobar``. If you would like to organize your files in other ways where the
+name of the subfolder would not be a good category name, you can set the
+setting ``USE_FOLDER_AS_CATEGORY`` to ``False``. If there is no summary
+metadata for a given post, the ``SUMMARY_MAX_LENGTH`` setting can be used to
+specify how many words from the beginning of an article are used as the
+summary.
 
 You can also extract any metadata from the filename through a regular
 expression to be set in the ``FILENAME_METADATA`` setting.