gh-64921: Clarify wording for open()'s newline arg (GH-96171)

(cherry picked from commit 4a74e6ab3885e7906cc5e0b15addc7779bc76249)

Co-authored-by: Stanley <46876382+slateny@users.noreply.github.com>

diff --git a/Doc/library/functions.rst b/Doc/library/functions.rst
index d84977fd860dd7de81062cd37bed38fd298e0826..86b88c0c552cb6927692773093815d246bb72ba3 100644 (file)
--- a/Doc/library/functions.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/functions.rst
@@ -1244,8 +1244,8 @@ are always available.  They are listed here in alphabetical order.
 
    .. _open-newline-parameter:
 
-   *newline* controls how :term:`universal newlines` mode works (it only
-   applies to text mode).  It can be ``None``, ``''``, ``'\n'``, ``'\r'``, and
+   *newline* determines how to parse newline characters from the stream.
+   It can be ``None``, ``''``, ``'\n'``, ``'\r'``, and
    ``'\r\n'``.  It works as follows:
 
    * When reading input from the stream, if *newline* is ``None``, universal