I think the easiest way to make it more elegant (from my perspective) would be to prohibit empty messages.
Which is fair enough. But it would probably just be people writing 'Scout Reports', or something like that. It's really just an aesthetic issue about how it all looks. If, as Chenier reports, it causes problems on mobile to write messages, it's probably best not to prohibit empty messages. People will probably get used to the new look reports.
