An example is that specification-style suites, such as Spec, generate output that reads more like a specification. One aspect of this is that generally only a single event should be reported for each test, so that output can appear like this:

 A Stack (when newly created)
 - should be empty
 - should complain when popped
 

ScalaTest suites should generate two events per test, a TestStarting event and either a TestSucceeded or a TestFailed event. The Spec trait does report both events, but passes a MotionToSuppress along with the TestStarting event. As a result, The TestStarting events have no effect on the output. Each TestSucceeded or TestFailed event, which is sent with an IndentedText formatter instead of a MotionToSuppress, will generate output, such as "- should be empty".

Reporters may choose to ignore a MotionToSuppress. For example, an XML reporter may want to report everything about every event that is fired during a concurrent run, so that the events can be reordered later by reading the complete, but unordered, information from an XML file. In this case, the XML reporter would actually report events that were fired with a MotionToSuppress, including indicating that the report included a motion to suppress.