What Does It Mean to ‘Dot Your I’s and Cross Your T’s’?

To dot your i’s and cross your t’s means —

• to be very meticulous in your work;
• to be extremely thorough in what you do or say;
• to pay great attention to minute details or to take great pains to eliminate all mistakes.

The school children are often admonished to dot the I’s and cross the T’s while learning to write small case alphabets. It is easy to miss these minute but key details, but they are important if you want your work to be error-free. Thus, to dot your i’s and cross your t’s means to pay great attention to detail, to eliminate all mistakes.

By the way, the dot over the small case letters ‘i’ and ‘j’ is called a tittle, which seems like a fusion of two words — tiny and little. And the horizontal line slicing the small case letter ‘t’ is called a crossbar.

Let’s see an example —

We have a meeting with a VC tomorrow. Make sure to dot your i’s and cross your t’s before you give your presentation.

It means that you should check your presentation thoroughly and meticulously and ensure that there are no mistakes in your presentation before we meet a venture capitalist tomorrow.

I hope you found this story interesting. If you did, buy my full course on Udemy or watch it for free on Skillshare by signing up here. This course covers nearly 380 idioms with their origins and backstories.

Hi, I am Gauri Shanker, a Vocab teacher and enthusiast. I teach vocabulary in a fun and engaging way. You can check out my courses here.