The work is also termed Naaladi Naanooru, sometimes spelled Naladi Nannurru, meaning "four hundred quatrains," since it has 400 verses in total.
Nālaṭiyār is unique in the employment of similes, which help to teach the moral codes using simple examples from daily life.
For example, one of the poems states that just like a calf placed in front of a vast herd of cows seeks out its mother unerringly and attaches itself, the deeds of the past home in on the doer and exact their price unfailingly.
Naladiyar remains the highly praised ancient didactic text in Tamil next only to the Tirukkural.
Along with the Tirukkural, it is one of the first books published in Tamil, when it came to print from palm leaf manuscripts for the first time in 1812.