diff --git a/src/hdmf/backends/hdf5/h5tools.py b/src/hdmf/backends/hdf5/h5tools.py
index 23107e282..b0b18b952 100644
--- a/src/hdmf/backends/hdf5/h5tools.py
+++ b/src/hdmf/backends/hdf5/h5tools.py
@@ -924,8 +924,8 @@ def __resolve_dtype__(cls, dtype, data):
         # binary
         # number
 
-        # Use text dtype for Zarr datasets of strings. Zarr stores variable lenght strings
-        # as objects so we need to detect this special case here
+        # Use text dtype for Zarr datasets of strings. Zarr stores variable length strings
+        # as objects, so we need to detect this special case here
         if hasattr(data, 'attrs') and 'zarr_dtype' in data.attrs and data.attrs['zarr_dtype'] == 'str':
             return cls.__dtypes['text']
 
diff --git a/src/hdmf/build/objectmapper.py b/src/hdmf/build/objectmapper.py
index 5d96eeddf..58dcf19f6 100644
--- a/src/hdmf/build/objectmapper.py
+++ b/src/hdmf/build/objectmapper.py
@@ -210,14 +210,14 @@ def convert_dtype(cls, spec, value, spec_dtype=None):  # noqa: C901
                 (hasattr(value, 'astype') and hasattr(value, 'dtype'))):
             if spec_dtype_type is _unicode:
                 if hasattr(value, 'attrs') and 'zarr_dtype' in value.attrs:
-                    # Zarr stores strings as objects so we cannot convert to unicode dtype
+                    # Zarr stores strings as objects, so we cannot convert to unicode dtype
                     ret = value
                 else:
                     ret = value.astype('U')
                 ret_dtype = "utf8"
             elif spec_dtype_type is _ascii:
                 if hasattr(value, 'attrs') and 'zarr_dtype' in value.attrs:
-                    # Zarr stores strings as objects so we cannot convert to unicode dtype
+                    # Zarr stores strings as objects, so we cannot convert to unicode dtype
                     ret = value
                 else:
                     ret = value.astype('S')