Once you've finished making changes, you need to commit them to the repository, but before you do so, it's usually a good idea to take a look at exactly what you've changed. By examining your changes before you commit, you can compose a more accurate log message (a human-readable description of the committed changes stored alongside those changes in the repository). You may also discover that you've inadvertently changed a file, and that you need to undo that change before committing. Additionally, this is a good opportunity to review and scrutinize changes before publishing them.