On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 09:52:14PM -0700, Larry Hastings wrote:

D'oh!  I have a second draft already.

   Your NEWS entry should be written in the /present tense,/ and should
   start with a verb:

Without a subject of the sentence, that's not present tense, it is the 
imperative mood.

    "Fix buffalo.spam ..."

is a command or suggestion. The imperative is suitable for a list of 
things which should be done, a TODO list, not a list of things which 
have already been done.

https://grammar.collinsdictionary.com/easy-learning/the-imperative

The reference is not very good at explaining this, perhaps because the mood in English is not obvious. (Sometimes you have to be French.)

The instruction "in the present tense, and should start with a verb" doesn't pin it down, at least if you consider context and are liberal about punctuation:

    # present tense, indicative mood
    "bpo-41056: Fixes a reference to deallocated stack ..." -> "bpo-41056 fixes ...

    # present tense, imperative mood
    "bpo-41094: Fix decoding errors with audit ... "

The preference for the imperative mood probably begins with the title of a change *request*, where the imperative is the one obvious choice, don't you think? I think I prefer it, but if blurb does not mine the commit/PR for text, it's not a constraint. If the trail starts with a bug report ("buffalo.spam borks the weeble when x is negative" (present indicative)) then that makes a confusing commit or news message as Guido points out.

Jeff