diff --git a/docs/contributing.md b/docs/contributing.md
index a40654cc..667978ca 100644
--- a/docs/contributing.md
+++ b/docs/contributing.md
@@ -13,8 +13,7 @@ Sanic's documentation is built using [sphinx](http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/1.5.1
 To generate the documentation from scratch:
 
 ```bash
-rm -f docs/_api/*
-sphinx-apidoc -o docs/_api/ sanic
+sphinx-apidoc -fo docs/_api/ sanic
 sphinx-build -b html docs docs/_build
 ```