I do not know if the above address again bounces for me, but you will see that on the list I presume... > [Really dumb question: How do you separate comments, like this, from the > commit itself? Here done with dashes.] There are two ways often used on this list. (1) Traditional, "really automatable and nicer to the maintainer" style. From xxx Subject: [PATCH] Add example xinetd(8) config... Commit log comes here, without the cover letter material. Signed-off-by: A U Thor <author@xxxxxxxxxxx> --- * Cover letter material comes here, before the usual diffstat and patch Documentation/everyday.txt | 23 +++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 files changed, 23 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/everyday.txt b/Documenta... index 2ad2d61..ffba543 100644 Two points to observe: - Subject: should be changed to match the first line of the commit log message you would want to see, as needed. - cover letter material comes after the "---\n" line. When the cover letter material is short, this is often preferred, since I can just run "git am" on the whole thing and everything after the first "^---", including your cover letter material, is omitted from the log message. It is, however, like top-posting and becomes harder to follow if the cover letter material gets long, in which case I personally prefer style (2) (but do not send style (2) to Linus). (2) e-mail style, but NEVER use "---" (or longer) marker between cover letter and the commit log. From xxx Subject: Re: some earlier discussion topic Longer discussion, rambling, quotes, and cover letter material. -- >8 -- cut here -- >8 -- [PATCH] Add example xinetd(8) config... Commit log comes here. Signed-off-by: A U Thor <author@xxxxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/everyday.txt | 23 +++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 files changed, 23 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/everyday.txt b/Documenta... index 2ad2d61..ffba543 100644 When the cover letter material is long, this is easier to read, because it avoids the problems associated with top-posting. However, when I apply this with "git am", I would need to go interactive and remove everything before the scissors line by hand. Usual patch application toolchain (either git-applymbox or git-am) first splits your message at the first "^---" or "^diff -", and uses the part before that line to form the commit log message (together with what you have on the "Subject:" line). The rest is fed to git-apply. What this means is that you do not have to use the scissors logo (the tool does not know about it), but it is _absolutely_ necessary not to use anything that would usually signal the tool of the commit log message in place of the scissors. If you have the cover letter first and then "---" or "-----" followed by the commit message after that, the commit log message will be taken from the "discussion, rambling, quotes, and cover letter material" part and the real commit log you wanted to have will not be seen at all, which needs to be hand fixed. - : send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html