... people say "mind your p's and q's" when they want you to be careful?
There are two equally plausible explanations for this saying. The first deals with the
problems children have with the alphabet.
When children write letters, they sometimes get their lowercase p's and
q's mixed up and write
words like cuqboard and puit instead of cupboard and quit. To help them avoid such mistakes, teachers
of old used to admonish them to "mind their p's and q's".
The second explanation traces the origin back to old English pubs where the number of pints and
quarts of ale consumed by a patron were kept on a chalkboard under the heading p's and q's. When a
patron had accummulated a high number of marks, he was reminded by the barkeeper to "mind his p's
and q's."
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