--- a/doc/ChangeLog
+++ b/doc/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+2011-03-31  Rik  <octave@nomad.inbox5.com>
+
+	* interpreter/contrib.txi: Add recommended format for commit messages
+	which reference the bug tracker.
+
 2011-03-28  Rik  <octave@nomad.inbox5.com>
 
 	* interpreter/expr.txi: Eliminate space between variable and

--- a/doc/interpreter/contrib.txi
+++ b/doc/interpreter/contrib.txi
@@ -71,9 +71,9 @@
 @end example
 
 You may want to get familiar with Mercurial queues to manage your
-changesets.  Here is a slightly less simple example using Mercurial
-queues, where you work on two unrelated changesets in parallel and
-update one of the changesets after discussion in the maintainers mailing
+changesets.  Here is a slightly more complex example using Mercurial
+queues, where work on two unrelated changesets is done in parallel and
+one of the changesets is updated after discussion on the maintainers mailing
 list:
 
 @example
@@ -115,7 +115,7 @@
 comment header (use appropriate year, name and comment marks):
 
 @example
-## Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 2007 John W. Eaton <jwe@@octave.org>
+## Copyright (C) 1996-2011 John W. Eaton <jwe@@octave.org>
 ##
 ## This file is part of Octave.
 ##
@@ -160,6 +160,19 @@
 code, particularly if there is something that might not be obvious to
 someone reading it later.
 
+When submitting code which addresses a known bug on the Octave bug tracker
+(@url{http://bugs.octave.org}), please add '(bug #XXXXX)' to the ChangeLog 
+and Mercurial commit messages.  Example:
+
+@example
+@group
+2011-03-29  Michael Creel  <michael.creel@@uab.es>
+
+	* statistics/base/ols.m: Fix erroneous degrees of freedom when
+	computing the covariance estimator (bug #32892).
+@end group
+@end example
+
 The preferred comment mark for places that may need further attention is
 FIXME.