Package: coreutils
Version: 8.13-2
Severity: minor

The chmod SYNOPSIS has these 2 most prominent usages:

> chmod  [OPTION]... MODE[,MODE]... FILE...
>  chmod  [OPTION]... OCTAL-MODE FILE... 

The description then says:
> chmod  changes the file mode bits of each given file according to 
> /mode/, which can be either a symbolic representation of changes to 
> make, or an octal number representing the bit pattern for the new mode 
> bits. 

without distinguishing between MODE and OCTAL-MODE.