Page 160 - Perfect Phrases ESL Everyday Business

Appendix A

Plan B
Most people plan on a particular action, take it, and move on. Some-
times, taking that action becomes impossible. The idiom Americans
use is “Let’s go to Plan B.” Another way to say this is “Our original plan
won’t work. We need another option.” It’s a good idea to have a Plan
B in mind just in case you need it.

ETA and ETD
Transportation acronyms, ETA and ETD mean “estimated time of
arrival” and “estimated time of departure,” respectively. While they
are still used for transportation, they are also used more informally.
You may be waiting for someone who is typically late for meetings,
and a colleague may ask, “What’s his ETA?” You might be planning
to leave with a colleague to meet with a client and be unsure of the
schedule and ask, “What’s our ETD?”

FYI

These letters mean “for your information.” You may just want to keep
someone in the loop but not want any action from that person. Often
FYI is used at the top of a memo or an e-mail.

P’s and Q’s
Mind your p’s and q’s means “to behave appropriately or to dem-
onstrate good manners.” Here are two of the possible origins.
Seventeenth-century bartenders watched how much their patrons
consumed, noting the number of pints and quarts they drank. The
bartenders suggested that patrons “mind their p’s and q’s.” Another
story refers to old printing presses, in which an upside down p or q
could cause a misspelling, thus leading to the printer’s caution to
“mind their p’s and q’s.”

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