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Punctuation matters. Punctuation. matters.

31 Jul 2026

A sign which reads: "STOP HAVE Shawarma wrap £5' image
Seeing this sign whilst I was out last night, I was reminded of the famous "panda eats, shoots and leaves" joke which demonstrates how adding or removing commas completely changes a sentence from describing a diet to describing violent actions.

The panda eats shoots and leaves.

The panda eats, shoots, and leaves
Deborah Reid profile image
Deborah Reid
Lead Test Engineer
she/her

As a Lead Test Engineer, with 15 years experience, Deborah specialises in quality engineering, risk management, and scaling test strategies.

Over the years, she has spearheaded quality operations for major international expansions, including multi-region deployments and scaled QE to support expanding product domains. Most recently, she's focused on driving shift-left quality practices and automation.

She is deeply passionate about fostering a quality-first culture that balances speed with stability. Her approach centres on pragmatic automation - leveraging tools like Cypress where they add maximum ROI, paired with targeted exploratory testing to safeguard complex user journeys.

She also has a passion for accessibility testing and has written a course on the topic https://www.ministryoftesting.com/courses/introduction-to-accessibility-testing?s_id=19046932

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