Vintage work crew photos

[Floradawg]

I have heard several ideas where the phrase "mind your p's and q's" comes from but I think it has to be from setting type.

[the harmonious blacksmith]

So many terms come from printing.

Mind your p's and q's is only one, meant to tell the "printer's Devils" (apprentices) to be careful because the type is in mirror image.
Apprentices began by distributing the individual used pieces of type into the case (the compartmental drawers holding the individual letters, numbers, punctuation, spaces, etc)into their proper places so the typesetters never had to look at each pieces while setting the type.

Upper Case and Lower Case were the cases in newspaper cases holding the "capital letters" in the upper case and the "inferior letters" in the lower case. There were many styles of cases for job printing uses, but the news cases, holding many "fonts" of type were separated into the upper and lower cases.

"Cut to the chase" come from tearing down a printing form in a rectangular frame called a chase.

"To coin a phrase" comes from the various types of QUOINs, expanding clamping devices, used to lock the type into the chase. They're spelled QUOIN but pronounced COIN.

FONT, for that matter, is misused these days. They are using FONT instead of TYPEFACE. Technically, a font is a particular number of type pieces of each letter or figure of one size and weight of a singular type face, those numbers relatively small but type was purchased in those numbers and usually more than one font was required to fill a case with sufficient pieces of each character to set a job. Printers are fighting a losing battle on that one :-(

"Making a good impression" probably comes from printing but that's conjecture on my part.