Mind your P's & Q's...

eberntson
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Mind your P's & Q's...

Postby eberntson » Tue Mar 15, 2005 11:06 am

I know the definition of this saying, but I wonder where it comes from? English I would say... more ideas?

bnjtokyo

Postby bnjtokyo » Tue Mar 29, 2005 2:06 am

Dear Eberntson:

Nobody seems to know. This Site gives several popular hypotheses.

Cheers,

KatyBr
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Postby KatyBr » Tue Mar 29, 2005 3:45 am

I meant to respond to this a while ago. Here is a discussion on the subject from the last incarnation...
mind p's and q's

Katy

Apoclima
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Postby Apoclima » Tue Mar 29, 2005 7:13 am

I think that it may come from a time when dyslexia was really a problem. And when writing out one's tab at a tavern, it was customary to write things from left to right and on the next write them right to left, etc. In such a case the "p"s hardly looked different from the "q"s and it was up to scholars and the courts to decide which were "p"s and which were "q"s.

And that is why handwriting became so important!

"p"s are pints and "q"s are quarts, ask any milkperson!

Apo
'Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.' -Max Planck

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gailr
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Postby gailr » Tue Mar 29, 2005 7:00 pm

apoclima
"p"s are pints and "q"s are quarts, ask any milkperson!
What if the patron was drinking half pints? btw: I was enchanted by the "firkins" on this site and the possibilities of ordering a round with this unit of measure... :)
gailr


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