The purpose of this paper is to capture the intuition that imperatives and deontic modal sentences are alike in some way but different in other ways, I show that imperatives and deontic modal sentences are alike in that both types of sentences have the modal force of deontic modality, but that they are different in that while imperatives make a contribution that there is an obligation or a permission issued by the speaker as an essential part of their meaning, deontic modal sentences assert the existence of an obligation or a permission in the current world.