English term
United States
BA in Transl., MA in ESL, 15 yrs of exp.
Native in: Portuguese 
Works in: English to Portuguese, Portuguese to English, Spanish to Portuguese, and 2 more.
mind your p's and q's
Mind your Ps and Qs is an English language expression meaning "mind your manners", "mind your language", "be on your best behaviour", "watch what you're doing". (Wikipedia)
mind your p's and q's - also watch your p's and q's - pay close attention to small details. There had been two recent security problems in the company and everyone should mind their p's and q's. (Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms)
Please note: I don't have a specific context for the term in question.
Register: idiomatic
Non-PRO (2): Yvonne Gallagher, AllegroTrans
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Responses
Greece
EnFrGreek Medical/Mechanical/Legal
Native in: Greek (Variant: Modern) , Greek (Ancient) (Variants: Koine (common), Doric, Homeric, Ionic, Aeolic) 
Works in: French to Greek, Greek to French, English to Greek, and 5 more.
Be on your best behaviour or mind your manners
Mind your Ps and Qs is an English language expression meaning "mind your manners", "mind your language", "be on your best behaviour", "watch what you're doing".
Attempts at explaining the origin of the phrase go back to the mid-19th century. One explanation favoured in a letter to the editors of Notes and Queries dated 1851, is a literal interpretation of the saying, regarding possible confusion between the lowercase letters p and q in schoolwork or typesetting.[1] This is mentioned in the 3rd edition Oxford English Dictionary, but the OED considers the explanation unlikely since "the chronology of the senses would argue against this, and no such connotation is evident in the earliest quotations" and says that the origin of the expression is unknown.[2]
Movable type p's and q's could be easily mistaken, especially as they are mirror-reversed from the printed result.
According to Michael Quinion, "investigations by the Oxford English Dictionary in 2007 when revising the entry turned up early examples of the use of Ps and Qs to mean learning the alphabet. The first is in a poem by Charles Churchill, published in 1763: ‘On all occasions next the chair / He stands for service of the Mayor, / And to instruct him how to use / His As and Bs, and Ps and Qs.’ The conclusion must be that this is the true origin."[3]
When pupils were taught lowercase alphabet, the position of the vertical line before or after the circle represented different letters: d & b, p & q. Pupils also had to mind the order of letters in the alphabet (p comes before q). As noted by W. D. Henkle in Educational Notes and Queries in 1876, in this sense the phrase should be "note your p's and q's" (lowercase), because the distinction of majuscule P and Q does not pose a problem.[4]
Nevertheless, a number of alternative explanations have been considered plausible. One suggests "Ps and Qs" is short for "pleases" and "thank-yous", the latter syllables pronounced like the letter "Q". Another proposal is from the English pubs and taverns of the 17th century: bartenders would keep watch over the pints and quarts consumed by the patrons, telling them to "mind their Ps and Qs".[5] This may also have been a reminder to bartenders not to confuse the two units, written as "p" and "q" on the tally slate.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_your_Ps_and_Qs
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ps-and-qs/
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Note added at 19 ώρες (2022-12-31 13:01:11 GMT)
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https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2012/04/17/mind-your-ps...
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Note added at 23 ώρες (2022-12-31 16:59:29 GMT)
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What does P's and Q's mean slang?
The English idiom “mind your p's and q's” means to pay attention to the details of etiquette. Another way to say “mind your p's and q's” is to say “mind your manners!” or “be careful about the details!”
https://unclegoose.com/blogs/blog/what-does-it-mean-to-mind-...
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Tony M
: Many of those are no more than charming legends, though the compositor's instruction makes a lot of sense, especially as most would in those days have been illiterate! But confusing letters with ascenders / descenders makes sense, kids often have trouble
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As a non-native I was quite glad to learn about this idiom for the first time and since we have almost the same phenomenon in Greek with 'n' and 's', it surely refers to the meticulous person, attentive to details, in all likelihood. Bonne Année!
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Yvonne Gallagher
: Phil already answered this question in Dbox so you could have posted this as ref? Asker asked for (current) meaning, not provenance
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Bonne Année à vous aussi!
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Discussion
"There had been two recent security problems in the company and everyone should [be on their best behavior] (emphasis added)."
than this:
... everybody should [pay closer attention to details].
I'm just playing with the example sentence they have used. Any comments?
However, I think "pay close attention to small details" is a less than perfect definition, because it omits the idea of "or you could get into trouble".