diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.24.0.txt b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.24.0.txt
index 3053625721560..58f33f8a6f445 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.24.0.txt
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.24.0.txt
@@ -201,6 +201,7 @@ Other Enhancements
 - :meth:`Index.to_frame` now supports overriding column name(s) (:issue:`22580`).
 - New attribute :attr:`__git_version__` will return git commit sha of current build (:issue:`21295`).
 - Compatibility with Matplotlib 3.0 (:issue:`22790`).
+- Validate docstring examples are PEP-8 compliant (:issue:`23154`)
 
 .. _whatsnew_0240.api_breaking:
 
diff --git a/scripts/validate_docstrings.py b/scripts/validate_docstrings.py
index 6588522331433..2b746b1d0a8fe 100755
--- a/scripts/validate_docstrings.py
+++ b/scripts/validate_docstrings.py
@@ -23,6 +23,7 @@
 import pydoc
 import inspect
 import importlib
+import contextlib
 import doctest
 try:
     from io import StringIO
@@ -40,6 +41,8 @@
 from numpydoc.docscrape import NumpyDocString
 from pandas.io.formats.printing import pprint_thing
 
+from pycodestyle import Checker
+
 
 PRIVATE_CLASSES = ['NDFrame', 'IndexOpsMixin']
 DIRECTIVES = ['versionadded', 'versionchanged', 'deprecated']
@@ -112,6 +115,11 @@ def get_api_items(api_doc_fd):
         previous_line = line
 
 
+class DocstringExampleChecker(Checker):
+    def set_lines(self, lines):
+        self.lines = lines
+
+
 class Docstring(object):
     def __init__(self, name):
         self.name = name
@@ -512,6 +520,25 @@ def validate_one(func_name):
         examples_errs = doc.examples_errors
         if examples_errs:
             errs.append('Examples do not pass tests')
+        example_checker = DocstringExampleChecker()
+        example_list = doctest.DocTestParser().get_examples(doc.raw_doc)
+        example_checker.set_lines([ex.source for ex in example_list])
+
+        # check_all will print the error to stdout, so we suppress this
+        with open(os.devnull, "w") as f, contextlib.redirect_stdout(f):
+            num_errs = example_checker.check_all()
+        if num_errs > 0:
+            # returns a tuple of error information
+            err_report = example_checker.report._deferred_print
+            for line_number, offset, code, text, doc in err_report:
+                # module level import not at top of file
+                if code == 'E402':
+                    continue
+                # multi-line assignments report E501 incorrectly
+                elif code == 'E501':
+                    continue
+                errs.append('{}: {} {}:{}:{}'.format(
+                    code, text, func_name, line_number, offset))
 
     return {'type': doc.type,
             'docstring': doc.clean_doc,