diff --git a/lib/github/commands/rest2html b/lib/github/commands/rest2html
index c8c8b521..ca9f26ff 100755
--- a/lib/github/commands/rest2html
+++ b/lib/github/commands/rest2html
@@ -86,6 +86,14 @@ class GitHubHTMLTranslator(HTMLTranslator):
         else:
             self.body.append(self.starttag(node, 'pre'))
 
+    # always wrap two-backtick rst inline literals in <code>, not <tt>
+    # this also avoids the generation of superfluous <span> tags
+    def visit_literal(self, node):
+        self.body.append(self.starttag(node, 'code', suffix=''))
+
+    def depart_literal(self, node):
+        self.body.append('</code>')
+
     def visit_table(self, node):
         classes = ' '.join(['docutils', self.settings.table_style]).strip()
         self.body.append(
diff --git a/test/markups/README.rst.html b/test/markups/README.rst.html
index 4186694d..09c2bf32 100644
--- a/test/markups/README.rst.html
+++ b/test/markups/README.rst.html
@@ -10,8 +10,8 @@ <h2 class="subtitle" id="subtitle">Subtitle</h2>
 </div>
 <h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id1">Header 2</a></h2>
 <ol class="arabic simple">
-<li>Blah blah <tt class="docutils literal">code</tt> blah</li>
-<li>More <tt class="docutils literal">code</tt>, hooray</li>
+<li>Blah blah <code>code</code> blah</li>
+<li>More <code>code</code>, hooray</li>
 <li>Somé UTF-8°</li>
 </ol>
 <p>The UTF-8 quote character in this table used to cause python to go boom. Now docutils just silently ignores it.</p>
diff --git a/test/markups/README.rst.txt.html b/test/markups/README.rst.txt.html
index d46c426f..c8e8b33d 100644
--- a/test/markups/README.rst.txt.html
+++ b/test/markups/README.rst.txt.html
@@ -2,8 +2,8 @@ <h1 class="title">Header 1</h1>
 <p>Example text.</p>
 <h2>Header 2</h2>
 <ol class="arabic simple">
-<li>Blah blah <tt class="docutils literal">code</tt> blah</li>
-<li>More <tt class="docutils literal">code</tt>, hooray</li>
+<li>Blah blah <code>code</code> blah</li>
+<li>More <code>code</code>, hooray</li>
 <li>Somé UTF-8°</li>
 </ol>
 <table class="docutils">