diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 5167fa96..a68be221 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@
 `ggplot` is a Python implementation of the grammar of graphics. It is not intended
 to be a feature-for-feature port of [`ggplot2 for R`](https://github.com/hadley/ggplot2)--though 
 there is much greatness in `ggplot2`, the Python world could stand to benefit 
-from it. So there __will be feature overlap__, but not neccessarily mimicry 
+from it. So there __will be feature overlap__, but not necessarily mimicry 
 (after all, R is a little weird).
 
 You can do cool things like this:
diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst
index 091d9219..572ac9d0 100644
--- a/README.rst
+++ b/README.rst
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ not intended to be a feature-for-feature port of
 ```ggplot2 for R`` <https://github.com/hadley/ggplot2>`__--though there
 is much greatness in ``ggplot2``, the Python world could stand to
 benefit from it. So there **will be feature overlap**, but not
-neccessarily mimicry (after all, R is a little weird).
+necessarily mimicry (after all, R is a little weird).
 
 You can do cool things like this:
 
diff --git a/contributing.md b/contributing.md
index 56a4f32d..8287d10c 100644
--- a/contributing.md
+++ b/contributing.md
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ rejected if your code is difficult to read--even if it works.
 - Don't use the R ggplot2 package as an implementation reference. I can't stress
  this enough (this is not a knock against ggplot2 or the coding style). Just think
  about what you'd be doing. You'd be trying to make Python behave like R. Now
- that's just sacreligious. Just be careful. Often times pull requests that violate
+ that's just sacrilegious. Just be careful. Often times pull requests that violate
  this rule also violate the "no black belt moves" policy.
 - Do less. Try to keep any incoming pull requests small.
 - Any new functionality should have an accompanying IPython Notebook in the