Look, the simple matter is that commit messages are designed from the bottom up to be a medium of prose in the same way email is. I would venture to guess that

Look, the simple matter is that commit messages are designed from the bottom up to be a medium of prose in the same way email is. I would venture to guess that an email written with good grammar, capitalizes subject (that is less then 50 characters), and a articulated thoughts would ecstatically welcomed compared to the drivel we normally recieve. Commit messages are no different. If one feels that a one liner is sufficient to establish context because the code is so impeccable then that is nothing short of arrogance. Think of commits like little emails. They have a subject that should fit in a subject cell of a table. They have a body. And they have attachments (the diffs). Why wrap lines? Because it is text. If you feel every client ever created handles wrapping appropriately then I’d ask to move the rock you’ve been under. For 30 years I’ve watched client after client screw up text wrapping. Heck, just sample a few government websites. By claiming commit messages are text you are taking back control of the crazy cesspool that is the modern app era and crafting a prose and typesetting fit for your own high standards. As Steve Jobs once quoted: “Be a yard stick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.“