On 10/23/05, Illinois Bill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Graywolf, > > I'm suprised you don't know the origin of that phrase, especially > since you mention about your childhood from way back when ;-) > > Seriously, the phrase comes from an old printers warning from > when we were using non-movable type to print newspapers, etc. Think > about putting in each individual letter into a plate by hand . . . > each letter of course was a stamp that was reversed as if it were > held in a mirror. Minding your p's and q's referred to the lowercase > version of each letter. Since they look like each other, only in > reverse they were commonly swapped . . . if the mistake was caught in > the first test print, there was ALLOT of work to be done to fix the > stray letter. > > IL Bill
bill, i'd always assumed it had to do with the lower-case version of those letters, although i thought it had more to do with a teacher admonishing students in grade one to make certain that the tails of the printed versions went in the right direction. pretty close to your version, though... -frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson
