«When prompted for the last cylinder, type +512M to create a partition 512MB in size» - why? There is no discussion or explanation presented as to what swap is. This might of course be a bit out of scope, but 512M is a really odd recommendation to give in 2012. If most people run a full blown desktop environment (GNOME3 and KDE4 likely being popular choices), a modern Web browser and email client (Firefox and Thunderbird being very applicable examples) - that means they can't hibernate to RAM. Considering the amount of people who come to #gentoo and #gentoo-chat to ask how much swap they should have and why, I propose a short description of what swap is used for, and a few example swap sizes. At the very least the one example given needs to be changed to e.g. the RAM size.
Thanks; you're right. There is hardly any information in the current handbook about swap purpose (and sizing). I've added this information. Should show up on the site in an hour or so.