Should you “take a queue” or a “take a cue”?

The idiom “take a cue from” means:

“to use someone else's behavior or reactions as a guide to one's own.”

An August 10th blog post at Ethos3  titled Lazy Tips for Design  by Sunday Avery fumbled it in the following section:

“Think Kid’s Book

Have you ever seen a presentation that looks minimal, contemporary, and sleek? It probably followed this design principle, which takes a queue from children’s books by only including a short amount of text and single object of focus per slide.”

On February 14, 2014 I blogged about a particular version of that design principle in a post titled Assertion-Evidence PowerPoint slides are a visual alternative to bullet point lists.

When you look up queue in Merriam-Webster you will find that one meaning is:

“a waiting line especially of persons or vehicles”

but that’s the second one listed in the full definition. The first is:

“a braid of hair usually worn hanging at the back of the head.”

The image of a queue came from a 1908 Puck magazine at the Library of Congress.