I've been using the 3rd one (lowercase with colon), because as you noted, it is the most prevalent.

I think we should be choosing between the second and third options. My preference is the second form, because the colon seems like noise to me (and I like the contents of the line after the comma to match the section name), but if consensus among editors is that the third is better, that's fine with me.

On Sun, Jul 10, 2016 at 05:18:50PM -0700, Richard Smith wrote:

I think we should be choosing between the second and third options. My preference is the second form, because the colon seems like noise to me (and I like the contents of the line after the comma to match the section name), but if consensus among editors is that the third is better, that's fine with me.

I've been using the 3rd option because that's the most common one.
It would be good to be consistant in any case.

On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 11:17:02AM -0800, dawn@burble.org wrote:

On Sun, Jul 10, 2016 at 05:18:50PM -0700, Richard Smith wrote:

I think we should be choosing between the second and third options. My preference is the second form, because the colon seems like noise to me (and I like the contents of the line after the comma to match the section name), but if consensus among editors is that the third is better, that's fine with me.

I've been using the 3rd option because that's the most common one.
It would be good to be consistent in any case.

I should add, that I really don't have a preference between 2 and 3, as
long as we're consistent.

I should add, that I really don't have a preference between 2 and 3, as
long as we're consistent.

Same here. Option 3 seems like the most prevalent one, so simplicity suggests we stick with that, but I'm also just as happy with 2 as with 3 in principle.

I second @zygoloid here, the colon is adding nothing.

I find the colon unnecessary too.