Question: Why is the # needed?

Here is a simple little procedure that does not work

et :=proc(x) 

description   "this is a variant of evalf that gets rid of almost 0 nos.(rounding error) and shortens the display to 2 `digits"`;  

if  abs(x) < 10^((-14))  then 0 else  evalf(x,2) end if     end proc;

Error, unable to delimit strings/identifiers

and here is the same procedure that works because I added the # before the description.

et :=proc(x)

# description   "this is a variant of evalf that gets rid of almost 0 nos.(rounding error) and shortens the display to 2 `digits"`;  

if  abs(x) < 10^((-14))  then 0 else  evalf(x,2) end if     end proc;

In the help pages they do not say that the description must be hidden by the # sign (nor do they mention that quotes should be used although they are used in the examples.

What am I missing?