Hi, All!

From the mentioned children book:

"He thinks we need a miracle," Sticky said in a bleak voice."
"Well, optimism has never been his strong suit," said Kate.


"Suit" -- is it pertain to playing cards?

Bye, All!
Alexander Koryagin

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Alexander Koryagin:

"He thinks we need a miracle," Sticky said in a bleak
voice." "Well, optimism has never been his strong
suit," said Kate.

I think you have an extra quote there!

"Suit" -- is it pertain to playing cards?

You ask whether the term pertains, or is pertinent, to card
games. I think `suit' there denotes general perseverence in
an effort, but the dict.org begs to differ:

long suit
(a) (Card Playing) the suit[8] of which a player has the
largest number of cards in his hand; as, his long
suit was clubs, but his partner insisted on making
hearts trumps.. Hence: [fig.] that quality or
capability which is a person's best asset; as, we
could see from the mess in his room that neatness was
not his long suit.

strong suit same as long suit,
(b) . "I think our strong suit is that we can score from
both the perimeter and the post." --Bill Disbrow
(basketball coach) 1998. "Rigid ideological
consistency has never been a strong suit of the Whole
Earth Catalogue." --Bruce Sterling (The Hacker
Crackdown, 1994)
[1913 Webster +PJC]

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Hi, Anton Shepelev - Alexander Koryagin!
I read your message from 26.12.2022 10:31

"He thinks we need a miracle," Sticky said in a bleak
voice." "Well, optimism has never been his strong
suit," said Kate.

I think you have an extra quote there!

I retyped it manually.

Bye, Anton!
Alexander Koryagin
english_tutor 2022

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Alexander Koryagin to Anton Shepelev:

I think you have an extra quote there!

I retyped it manually.

I do the same, and -- as you will have noticed -- with much
more retypos! I noticed the extra quote because they are
like keywords or literal marks in a programming language in
defining the structure of the text.

To boot -- the punctuation of direct speech being hard to
me, I prefer the older artless method employed, for
instance, in "The Water of the Wondrous Isles":

At last she spake, and her voice was not so harsh as
might have been looked for from her face: Dame, she said,
thou seemest to be less busy than most folk here; might I
crave of thee to tell an alien who has but some hour to
dwell in this good town where she may find her a chamber
wherein to rest and eat a morsel, and be untroubled of
ribalds and ill company? Said the poor-wife: Short shall
be my tale; I am over poor to know of hostelries and ale-
houses that I may tell thee aught thereof. Said the
other: Maybe some neighbour of thine would take me in for
thy sake? Said the mother: What neighbours have I since
my man died; and I dying of hunger, and in this town of
thrift and abundance?

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Ardith Hinton to Anton Shepelev:

I think `suit' there denotes general perseverence in an
effort, but the dict.org begs to differ:

According to THE FREE DICTIONARY, this term may refer
either to card games or to a highly developed
characteristic/talent/skill. Dict.org says it may refer
to a person's best asset & uses neatness as an example.

Indeed: I saw that boring, if not ill, example while writing
the my previous post. It says: "Neatness is not his strong
suit". But neatness is a passive quality, not requiring
creativity, courage, fortitude, or vigour. Characterising
it as a "suit" devaluates the word!

The second alternative is more figurative... but I think
you were on the right track when you mentioned
perseverance WRT Alexander's citation.

But I dislike that citation on the same ground as the
dict.org exmaple. A suit of a man to a maid (whence
`suitor') is more to my taste.

No matter what talents an individual was born with, they
may be improved by hard work & perseverance.

I quote the above for the fun of mentioning my surprise upon
initiaal misreading of `improved' as `removed'.

We could also say neatness isn't a person's forte, using
the term as it's used in music to refer to strength (but
not necessarily to volume). :-)

I believe `forte' refers to the attack of the sound rather
than to its volume -- a term I know not from music but from
electroacoustics. Yours is a fine point in both senses. It
leads to many interesting insights and contrasts: Imagine a
fast-rocking song with minor chords (example upon request!),
a naturally bright color (Yellow, Cyan) in a low tone.


P.S.: I offer my warmest compliments on the coming of the
New Year and the going of the Old one. Has anything
changed, except the snow in the streets is not last
year's?

P.P.S.: I see you indent the first line of your paragraphs
by nine spaces, which may be a typewriter
convention. But they having no line breaks, each
one is essentially a very long single line, whose
proper display depends on whether and how the client
software re-flows it to screen width. I therefore
propose another step towards the typewriter
canon -- breaking lines at a readable lenght, which
is usually between sixty-five and seventy two
characters.

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