Subject: [PATCH v2 5/9] doc: interpret-trailers: explain the format after the intro

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:21:04 +0200

From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <[email-masked]>

You need to read the entire “Description” section in order to understand
the full trailer format. But there are many nuances, so that’s fine.
As a starter though we have an introductory example.[1] That turns out
to be crucial; the rest of this section talks about the mechanics of the
command and only incidentally the format itself.

Now, although the example might arguably be self-explanatory, we can
add a little preamble which defines the format in its simplest form as
well as define the most important terms.

Note that we name the “blank line” rule since I want to use that term
every time it comes up. It gets very mildly obfuscated if you call it a
“blank line” in one place[2] and “empty (or whitespace-only) ...” in
another one.[3]

We will define the format of the *key* in the next commit.

† 1: from d57fa7fc (doc: trailer: add more examples in DESCRIPTION,
     2023-06-15)
† 2: `Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc:86` in
     5361983c (The 22nd batch, 2026-03-27)
† 3: `Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc:93` in
     5361983c (The 22nd batch, 2026-03-27)

Suggested-by: D. Ben Knoble <[email-masked]>
Signed-off-by: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <[email-masked]>
---

Notes (series):
    v2: [new]

 Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc | 7 ++++++-
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc b/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc
index 7329e710e1a..bcd79b19bd7 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc
+++ b/Documentation/git-interpret-trailers.adoc
@@ -16,7 +16,12 @@ DESCRIPTION
 -----------
 Add or parse trailers metadata at the end of the otherwise
 free-form part of a commit message, or any other kind of text.
-For example, in the following commit message
+
+A _trailer_ in its simplest form is a key-value pair with a colon as a
+separator. A _trailer block_ consists of one or more trailers. The
+trailer block needs to be preceded by a blank line, where a _blank line_
+is either an empty or a whitespace-only line. For example, in the
+following commit message
 
 ------------------------------------------------
 subject
-- 
2.53.0.32.gf6228eaf9cc