diff --git a/docs/topics/api.rst b/docs/topics/api.rst
index e1623287d..7c8c40b5f 100644
--- a/docs/topics/api.rst
+++ b/docs/topics/api.rst
@@ -99,6 +99,8 @@ how you :ref:`configure the downloader middlewares
 
         Returns a deferred that is fired when the crawl is finished.
 
+    .. automethod:: stop
+
 .. autoclass:: CrawlerRunner
    :members:
 
diff --git a/scrapy/crawler.py b/scrapy/crawler.py
index 99bf48385..151ae4f62 100644
--- a/scrapy/crawler.py
+++ b/scrapy/crawler.py
@@ -111,6 +111,8 @@ class Crawler(object):
 
     @defer.inlineCallbacks
     def stop(self):
+        """Starts a graceful stop of the crawler and returns a deferred that is
+        fired when the crawler is stopped."""
         if self.crawling:
             self.crawling = False
             yield defer.maybeDeferred(self.engine.stop)