Mind Your Ps and Qs
I had Christmas music playing this afternoon, and my elder daughter heard the following line from an old song titled Santa Claus Blues by Jimmy Boyd and Mitch Miller:
…be sure to mind your Ps and Qs, or wake up Christmas morning with the Santa Claus blues.
She asked me what your Ps and Qs are, and I was more than happy to enlighten her. It gave me the opportunity to explain how books, magazines, and advertisements used to be printed on a machine called a letter press by lining up little blocks of metal with letters on them. I described how the letters had to be backwards on the blocks so they would come out correctly on the page. Then I told her to think about the lowercase p and q, and she quickly realized how confusing it could be to remember that they are reversed when looking at the little pieces of metal.
She later had the opportunity to repeat what she had learned to her mother, who didn’t know the origin of the phrase either. I was so proud that she even remembered that the descenders of the letters are referred to as “stems.” It further led to a more detailed discussion about what exactly I do at work. I love seeing those wheels turn!
Note: There is no proof that this is the correct origin of the phrase, and other possible origins have been suggested, but I believe this one to be the most likely.
