Ps and Qs or P's and Q's?

Have you ever wondered how the term mind your Ps and Qs came to mean mind your manners? To be honest, the thought hadn’t crossed my mind either until a beer-loving friend brought it to my attention a few years back.


According to her findings (be honest, you thought she was a he), the saying originates from public houses in Old England. Apparently when customers became unruly, bartenders would yell at them to mind their pints and quarts – or Ps and Qs – referring, of course, to their bevies.


And that’s not the only drink-related theory. Another one suggests that back in the old days when sailors were paid a pittance, they frequented taverns that allowed them to run bar tabs until payday. Since many of them were illiterate, the landlords kept the tabs simple by writing Ps or Qs next to the sailors’ names each time they ordered a drink.


Back to the headline of this entry for a moment. If you were the writer, would you have written Mind your P’s and Q’s? Adding apostrophes to plurals of capital letters and numbers may feel as instinctive as crossing your Ts, but if no ambiguity is caused by their absence, they’re not required. In a nutshell:

• No ambiguity = no apostrophe: she knew the five Ps of the marketing mix off by heart and got straight As in the exam she took back in the 1990s.

• Ambiguity = apostrophe: A’s are hard to come by and I’s need dotting when their lower-case is used.