doc: rephrase the purpose of the staging area
Git does not really "store the contents of the next commit" anywhere; rather, you the user use the index to prepare it. Signed-off-by: Julia Evans <julia@jvns.ca> [jc; made the change relative to what is already in 'next'] Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Julia Evans committed
Aug 29, 2025 at 11:55 UTC
e5c27bd3d82c558f4f8ced1f61c28a466232ee21
1 file changed
+2
-2
Documentation/git-add.adoc
+2
-2
index bf793d2894..ad629c46c5 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-add.adoc
+++ b/Documentation/git-add.adoc
@@ -17,8 +17,8 @@ git add [--verbose | -v] [--dry-run | -n] [--force | -f] [--interactive | -i] [-
DESCRIPTION
-----------
Add contents of new or changed files to the index. The "index" (also
-known as "staging area") is where Git stores the contents of the next
-commit.
+known as the "staging area") is what you use to prepare the contents of
+the next commit.
When you run `git commit` without any other arguments, it will only
commit staged changes. For example, if you've edited `file.c` and want