Typo reported by Gerry Wiener <wiener@rap.ucar.edu>:

items -> item

The returned list will then have one more items than the number of
non-overlapping occurrences of the separator in the string.

Doc/lib/libstring.tex

@@ -168,7 +168,7 @@ The functions defined in this module are:
   separated by arbitrary strings of whitespace characters (space, tab, 
   newline, return, formfeed).  If the second argument \var{sep} is
   present and not \code{None}, it specifies a string to be used as the 
-  word separator.  The returned list will then have one more items
+  word separator.  The returned list will then have one more item
   than the number of non-overlapping occurrences of the separator in
   the string.  The optional third argument \var{maxsplit} defaults to
   0.  If it is nonzero, at most \var{maxsplit} number of splits occur,