diff --git a/changelog.d/11550.misc b/changelog.d/11550.misc
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..d5577e0b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelog.d/11550.misc
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Fix an inaccurate and misleading comment in the `/sync` code.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/synapse/handlers/sync.py b/synapse/handlers/sync.py
index 96f37e9f4..bcd10cbb3 100644
--- a/synapse/handlers/sync.py
+++ b/synapse/handlers/sync.py
@@ -1662,20 +1662,20 @@ class SyncHandler:
     ) -> _RoomChanges:
         """Determine the changes in rooms to report to the user.
 
-        Ideally, we want to report all events whose stream ordering `s` lies in the
-        range `since_token < s <= now_token`, where the two tokens are read from the
-        sync_result_builder.
+        This function is a first pass at generating the rooms part of the sync response.
+        It determines which rooms have changed during the sync period, and categorises
+        them into four buckets: "knock", "invite", "join" and "leave".
 
-        If there are too many events in that range to report, things get complicated.
-        In this situation we return a truncated list of the most recent events, and
-        indicate in the response that there is a "gap" of omitted events. Additionally:
+        1. Finds all membership changes for the user in the sync period (from
+           `since_token` up to `now_token`).
+        2. Uses those to place the room in one of the four categories above.
+        3. Builds a `_RoomChanges` struct to record this, and return that struct.
 
-        - we include a "state_delta", to describe the changes in state over the gap,
-        - we include all membership events applying to the user making the request,
-          even those in the gap.
-
-        See the spec for the rationale:
-            https://spec.matrix.org/v1.1/client-server-api/#syncing
+        For rooms classified as "knock", "invite" or "leave", we just need to report
+        a single membership event in the eventual /sync response. For "join" we need
+        to fetch additional non-membership events, e.g. messages in the room. That is
+        more complicated, so instead we report an intermediary `RoomSyncResultBuilder`
+        struct, and leave the additional work to `_generate_room_entry`.
 
         The sync_result_builder is not modified by this function.
         """
@@ -1686,16 +1686,6 @@ class SyncHandler:
 
         assert since_token
 
-        # The spec
-        #     https://spec.matrix.org/v1.1/client-server-api/#get_matrixclientv3sync
-        # notes that membership events need special consideration:
-        #
-        # > When a sync is limited, the server MUST return membership events for events
-        # > in the gap (between since and the start of the returned timeline), regardless
-        # > as to whether or not they are redundant.
-        #
-        # We fetch such events here, but we only seem to use them for categorising rooms
-        # as newly joined, newly left, invited or knocked.
         # TODO: we've already called this function and ran this query in
         #       _have_rooms_changed. We could keep the results in memory to avoid a
         #       second query, at the cost of more complicated source code.
@@ -2009,6 +1999,23 @@ class SyncHandler:
         """Populates the `joined` and `archived` section of `sync_result_builder`
         based on the `room_builder`.
 
+        Ideally, we want to report all events whose stream ordering `s` lies in the
+        range `since_token < s <= now_token`, where the two tokens are read from the
+        sync_result_builder.
+
+        If there are too many events in that range to report, things get complicated.
+        In this situation we return a truncated list of the most recent events, and
+        indicate in the response that there is a "gap" of omitted events. Lots of this
+        is handled in `_load_filtered_recents`, but some of is handled in this method.
+
+        Additionally:
+        - we include a "state_delta", to describe the changes in state over the gap,
+        - we include all membership events applying to the user making the request,
+          even those in the gap.
+
+        See the spec for the rationale:
+            https://spec.matrix.org/v1.1/client-server-api/#syncing
+
         Args:
             sync_result_builder
             ignored_users: Set of users ignored by user.