diff --git a/2012/splash.article b/2012/splash.article
index 39b9104..fd2cda2 100644
--- a/2012/splash.article
+++ b/2012/splash.article
@@ -1061,7 +1061,7 @@
 
 A key point about this transformation is that, because the input and
 output are both in the canonical format, the only changes made to
-the source code are semantic ones.
+the source code are syntactic ones.
 
 A similar but more intricate process allowed `gofmt` to be used to
 update the tree when the language no longer required semicolons