What does "minding your Ps and Qs" mean?

Question

what does p and q stand for...................

Answer 1

These are some of the explanations I’ve seen advanced in various places:

Advice to a child learning its letters to be careful not to mix up the handwritten lower-case letters p and q.

Similar advice to a printer’s apprentice, for whom the backward-facing metal type letters would be especially confusing.

Jocular, or perhaps deadly serious, advice to a barman not to confuse the letters p and q on the tally slate, on which the letters stood for the pints and quarts consumed “on tick” by the patrons.

An abbreviation of mind your please’s and thank-you’s.
Instructions from a French dancing master to be sure to perform the dance figures pieds and queues accurately.

An admonishment to seamen not to soil their navy pea-jackets with their tarred queues, that is, their pigtails.

Answer 2

In England, when the pub was a major social centre, the staff serving the beer were expected to be able to remember who was drinking Pints and Quarts so that the bills would be accurate to what the patron was drinking. Thus the phrase "mind your P's and Q's".

However, the phrase has taken on the new meaning of "mind your manners"

Hope this helps

Answer 3

The phrase did get it's start (as several have indicated) from minding your pints and quarts on the tally sheet for your bar bill. Since you had to keep yourself in control enough to make sure some unscrupulous bartender didn't charge you too much, it evolved to mean something along the lines of "mind your actions" or "keep your head about you".

Answer 4

in accordance to my maximum good source, the pub concept (watch the host while he chalks up the Pints and Quarts you have drunk on credit, so which you are able to no longer be overcharged) is the single maximum in many circumstances stated, yet there is not any info that it rather is rather the source of the expression. likely, it comes from schoolrooms, while instructors informed their scholars to make advantageous they understood which way around a "p" and a "q" (which look merely alike, yet face in opposite instructions) may be. So, while young little ones discovered to place in writing, they have been informed to strategies their playstation and Qs because of the fact it replace into basic to get them perplexed. the same concept I even have learn is that it got here from typesetting, lower back in the days while typesetters had to place each and every man or woman letter in a rack to set sort. because of the fact the letters regarded backwards while they have been set (so they might print suited ingredient around, like a replicate image), it replace into rather basic to confuse the decrease case p and q because of the fact they have been replicate photos of one yet another. So, typesetting masters might tell their apprentices to strategies their playstation and Qs, meaning to no longer get their decrease-case p and q mixed up.

Answer 5

most often this is used to mean mind your manners.
be polite or treat this matter seriously or behave in a formal manner .
99% of the time they mean you have been rude out of line or they are just warning you not to be rude with someone.
the strange thing is this all p and q came from pints and quaters your drinks as it is last call. i suppose the transfer to manners was so people would not go out and fight when leaving the bar or be rude to sobber people or police

Answer 6

They don't stand for anything. It simply means following the rules. It comes from being careful when you write, making sure the curl goes the right way so as not to mix up the p and q

Answer 7

it comes from old english pubs mind your pints and quarts.

Answer 8

this means to be good

Answer 9

I means dont be a puss or a queer

Answer 10

it mean mind ur own damn buiness