Documentation: stylistically normalize references to Signed-off-by:

Ted reported an old typo in the git-commit.txt and merge-options.txt.
Namely, the phrase "Signed-off-by line" was used without either a
definite nor indefinite article.

Upon examination, it seems that the documentation (including items in
Documentation/, but also option help strings) have been quite
inconsistent on usage when referring to `Signed-off-by`.

First, very few places used a definite or indefinite article with the
phrase "Signed-off-by line", but that was the initial typo that led
to this investigation.  So, normalize using either an indefinite or
definite article consistently.

The original phrasing, in Commit 3f971fc425b (Documentation updates,
2005-08-14), is "Add Signed-off-by line".  Commit 6f855371a53 (Add
--signoff, --check, and long option-names. 2005-12-09) switched to
using "Add `Signed-off-by:` line", but didn't normalize the former
commit to match.  Later commits seem to have cut and pasted from one
or the other, which is likely how the usage became so inconsistent.

Junio stated on the git mailing list in
<xmqqy2k1dfoh.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com> a preference to leave off
the colon.  Thus, prefer `Signed-off-by` (with backticks) for the
documentation files and Signed-off-by (without backticks) for option
help strings.

Additionally, Junio argued that "trailer" is now the standard term to
refer to `Signed-off-by`, saying that "becomes plenty clear that we
are not talking about any random line in the log message".  As such,
prefer "trailer" over "line" anywhere the former word fits.

However, leave alone those few places in documentation that use
Signed-off-by to refer to the process (rather than the specific
trailer), or in places where mail headers are generally discussed in
comparison with Signed-off-by.

Reported-by: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
Signed-off-by: Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn@sfconservancy.org>
Acked-by: Taylor Blau <me@ttaylorr.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/git-svn.txt b/Documentation/git-svn.txt
index 6624a14..67b143c 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-svn.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-svn.txt
@@ -701,7 +701,7 @@ creating the branch or tag.
 
 --use-log-author::
 	When retrieving svn commits into Git (as part of 'fetch', 'rebase', or
-	'dcommit' operations), look for the first `From:` or `Signed-off-by:` line
+	'dcommit' operations), look for the first `From:` line or `Signed-off-by` trailer
 	in the log message and use that as the author string.
 +
 [verse]
@@ -710,7 +710,7 @@ config key: svn.useLogAuthor
 --add-author-from::
 	When committing to svn from Git (as part of 'set-tree' or 'dcommit'
 	operations), if the existing log message doesn't already have a
-	`From:` or `Signed-off-by:` line, append a `From:` line based on the
+	`From:` or `Signed-off-by` trailer, append a `From:` line based on the
 	Git commit's author string.  If you use this, then `--use-log-author`
 	will retrieve a valid author string for all commits.
 +