diff --git a/HOCON.md b/HOCON.md
index f57ceaf8..f951e394 100644
--- a/HOCON.md
+++ b/HOCON.md
@@ -290,13 +290,20 @@ substitutions. This means that you can't nest substitutions inside
 other substitutions, and you can't have substitutions in keys.
 
 When concatenating the path expression, any `.` characters outside
-quoted strings or numbers are understood as path separators, while
-inside quoted strings and numbers `.` has no special meaning. So
+quoted strings are understood as path separators, while inside
+quoted strings `.` has no special meaning. So
 `foo.bar."hello.world"` would be a path with three elements,
 looking up key `foo`, key `bar`, then key `hello.world`.
 
- - `10.0foo` is a number then unquoted string `foo` so this would
-   be a single-element path.
+The main tricky point is that `.` characters in numbers do count
+as a path separator. When dealing with a number as part of a path
+expression, it's essential to retain the _original_ string
+representation of the number as it appeared in the file (rather
+than converting it back to a string with a generic
+number-to-string library function).
+
+ - `10.0foo` is a number then unquoted string `foo` and should
+   be the two-element path with `10` and `0foo` as the elements.
  - `foo10.0` is an unquoted string with a `.` in it, so this would
    be a two-element path with `foo10` and `0` as the elements.
  - `foo"10.0"` is an unquoted then a quoted string which are
diff --git a/src/test/scala/com/typesafe/config/impl/ConfParserTest.scala b/src/test/scala/com/typesafe/config/impl/ConfParserTest.scala
index 91fe67be..174bb3fa 100644
--- a/src/test/scala/com/typesafe/config/impl/ConfParserTest.scala
+++ b/src/test/scala/com/typesafe/config/impl/ConfParserTest.scala
@@ -126,6 +126,13 @@ class ConfParserTest extends TestUtils {
         assertEquals(path("a_c"), parsePath("a_c"))
         assertEquals(path("-"), parsePath("\"-\""))
 
+        // here 10.0 is part of an unquoted string
+        assertEquals(path("foo10", "0"), parsePath("foo10.0"))
+        // here 10.0 is a number that gets value-concatenated
+        assertEquals(path("10", "0foo"), parsePath("10.0foo"))
+        // just a number
+        assertEquals(path("10", "0"), parsePath("10.0"))
+
         for (invalid <- Seq("", " ", "  \n   \n  ", "a.", ".b", "a..b", "a${b}c", "\"\".", ".\"\"")) {
             try {
                 intercept[ConfigException.BadPath] {