I’m not really into the one assertion per xUnit test method dogma; I have sympathy but run with the fox as well as the hounds. But when I go for multiple assertions in a method, I do like to use the optional message string.

However I often see assertions that I do not like:

assertTrue(“Some widgets are missing”, testee.isAFullWidgetCompliment());

As far as reading the code is concerned the message (to me) says:

I assert that some widgets are missing

It’s the opposite of the actual test.

Because the above (unfortunate) convention is so common I avoid writing the natural message “All widgets are present” in favour of the unambiguous

assertTrue(“All widgets should be present”, testee.isAFullWidgetCompliment());