It affects the transfer in both directions equally. I supposed I should make that more explicit. What do you think about something like this:

~~~~~
--- a/docs/curl.1
+++ b/docs/curl.1
@@ -871,13 +871,14 @@ libcurl-using C source code written to the file that does the equivalent
 of what your command-line operation does!
 
 If this option is used several times, the last given file name will be
 used. (Added in 7.16.1)
 .IP "--limit-rate <speed>"
-Specify the maximum transfer rate you want curl to use. This feature is useful
-if you have a limited pipe and you'd like your transfer not to use your entire
-bandwidth.
+Specify the maximum transfer rate you want curl to use - for both downloads
+and uploads. This feature is useful if you have a limited pipe and you'd like
+your transfer not to use your entire bandwidth. To make it slower than it
+otherwise would be.
 
 The given speed is measured in bytes/second, unless a suffix is appended.
 Appending 'k' or 'K' will count the number as kilobytes, 'm' or M' makes it
 megabytes, while 'g' or 'G' makes it gigabytes. Examples: 200K, 3m and 1G.
 
~~~~

---
** [bugs:#1414] [manpage] terribly unclear documentation of --limit-rate**
**Status:** open
**Created:** Fri Aug 22, 2014 08:28 PM UTC by teo8976
**Last Updated:** Fri Aug 22, 2014 08:28 PM UTC
**Owner:** nobody
>From the documentation it's not clear whether --limit-rate applies to upload (i.e. sending the request) or download (i.e. receiving the response) or both.
Intuitively, I'd be inclined to guess it applies to upload, as i can hardly even imagine how a rate limit could be applied to download (given that it depends on the other side). However, there's this note:
> If you also use the -Y, --speed-limit option, that  option  will take precedence and might cripple the rate-limiting slightly, to help keeping the speed-limit logic working.
and since speed-limit _is_ related to download speed, that is confusing. 
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