diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index bc6b599c3..8b44e9639 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -266,6 +266,8 @@
 
 15. `first` and `last` gain an explicit `n=1L` argument so that it's clear the default is 1, and their almost identical manual pages have been merged into one.
 
+16. Re-wrote the warning about `strptime` usage in `j` to be more helpful/informative/actionable, [#2068](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/issues/2068). Thanks to @tdhock for the report.
+
 
 ### Changes in [v1.12.2](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/milestone/14?closed=1)  (07 Apr 2019)
 
diff --git a/R/data.table.R b/R/data.table.R
index 47c672932..6dfdd272e 100644
--- a/R/data.table.R
+++ b/R/data.table.R
@@ -1149,7 +1149,7 @@ replace_order = function(isub, verbose, env) {
   SDenv = new.env(parent=parent.frame())
   # taking care of warnings for posixlt type, #646
   SDenv$strptime = function(x, ...) {
-    warning("POSIXlt column type detected and converted to POSIXct. We do not recommend use of POSIXlt at all because it uses 40 bytes to store one date. Use as.POSIXct to avoid this warning.")
+    warning("strptime() usage detected and wrapped with as.POSIXct(). This is to minimize the chance of assigning POSIXlt columns, which use 40+ bytes to store one date (versus 8 for POSIXct). Use as.POSIXct() (which will call strptime() as needed internally) to avoid this warning.")
     as.POSIXct(base::strptime(x, ...))
   }
 
diff --git a/inst/tests/tests.Rraw b/inst/tests/tests.Rraw
index 58c3c63c4..4a549ef7b 100644
--- a/inst/tests/tests.Rraw
+++ b/inst/tests/tests.Rraw
@@ -8236,7 +8236,7 @@ ll = list(a=as.POSIXlt("2015-01-01", tz='UTC'), b=1:5)
 test(1612.1, as.data.table(ll), data.table(a=as.POSIXct("2015-01-01", tz='UTC'), b=1:5), warning="POSIXlt column type detected")
 dt = data.table(d1="1984-03-17")
 ans = data.table(d1="1984-03-17", d2=as.POSIXct("1984-03-17", tz='UTC'))
-test(1612.2, dt[, d2 := strptime(d1, "%Y-%m-%d", tz='UTC')], ans, warning="POSIXlt column type detected and converted")
+test(1612.2, dt[, d2 := strptime(d1, "%Y-%m-%d", tz='UTC')], ans, warning="strptime() usage detected and wrapped with as.POSIXct()")
 ll = list(a=as.POSIXlt("2015-01-01"), b=2L)
 test(1612.3, setDT(ll), error="Column 1 is of POSIXlt type")