dot the i's and cross the t's
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To carefully check and complete all details
Literally: To add missing dots and crosses in written letters
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
It is perceived that researchers wish to dot the i's and cross the t's.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed on Wikipedia “Irreversible binomial” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29). Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “dot the i's and cross the t's” mean?
To carefully check and complete all details Literally: To add missing dots and crosses in written letters
Is “dot the i's and cross the t's” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.