diff --git a/docs/sql-programming-guide.md b/docs/sql-programming-guide.md
index ad51b9cf416edafd9721a33a03f3ae995d7e4248..2aea8a8aedafc227cbc72c0468502a7f3ab9ef18 100644
--- a/docs/sql-programming-guide.md
+++ b/docs/sql-programming-guide.md
@@ -625,6 +625,10 @@ This conversion can be done using one of two methods in a SQLContext:
 * `jsonFile` - loads data from a directory of JSON files where each line of the files is a JSON object.
 * `jsonRDD` - loads data from an existing RDD where each element of the RDD is a string containing a JSON object.
 
+Note that the file that is offered as _jsonFile_ is not a typical JSON file. Each
+line must contain a separate, self-contained valid JSON object. As a consequence,
+a regular multi-line JSON file will most often fail.
+
 {% highlight scala %}
 // sc is an existing SparkContext.
 val sqlContext = new org.apache.spark.sql.SQLContext(sc)
@@ -663,6 +667,10 @@ This conversion can be done using one of two methods in a JavaSQLContext :
 * `jsonFile` - loads data from a directory of JSON files where each line of the files is a JSON object.
 * `jsonRDD` - loads data from an existing RDD where each element of the RDD is a string containing a JSON object.
 
+Note that the file that is offered as _jsonFile_ is not a typical JSON file. Each
+line must contain a separate, self-contained valid JSON object. As a consequence,
+a regular multi-line JSON file will most often fail.
+
 {% highlight java %}
 // sc is an existing JavaSparkContext.
 JavaSQLContext sqlContext = new org.apache.spark.sql.api.java.JavaSQLContext(sc);
@@ -701,6 +709,10 @@ This conversion can be done using one of two methods in a SQLContext:
 * `jsonFile` - loads data from a directory of JSON files where each line of the files is a JSON object.
 * `jsonRDD` - loads data from an existing RDD where each element of the RDD is a string containing a JSON object.
 
+Note that the file that is offered as _jsonFile_ is not a typical JSON file. Each
+line must contain a separate, self-contained valid JSON object. As a consequence,
+a regular multi-line JSON file will most often fail.
+
 {% highlight python %}
 # sc is an existing SparkContext.
 from pyspark.sql import SQLContext