How to Fix: SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal

EOL stands for “End of Line”. The SyntaxError EOL indicates an error where “Python reached the end of the line, but you were still in the middle of a string.”

Cause 1: Missing Closing Quote (Most Common)

You started a string with ", but forgot to put one at the end before hitting Enter.

# CRASH! Missing the quote after 'world!'
message = "Hello, world!

Cause 2: Trying to make a multi-line string incorrectly

Standard strings in Python cannot go across multiple lines.

Problem Code:

my_text = "This is line one
and this is line two"
# CRASH! EOL error.

The Fix (Triple Quotes): If you need text across multiple lines, you MUST use triple quotes (""" or ''').

my_text = """This is line one
and this is line two.
This works perfectly!"""