Hi, Anton!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

AS>  "Neatness is not his strong suit".  But neatness is a 
AS>  passive quality, not requiring creativity, courage, 
AS>  fortitude, or vigour. 


          It may be challenging for those to whom it does not come naturally... but I see your point.  A better example might be one or more of the subjects we were required to learn about at school:  math, science, history, geography, and whatnot.  I felt I had a knack for English, meaning the payoff for the effort I put into my studies was considerably greater than with other alternatives.  :-)



AS>  A suit of a man to a maid (whence 'suitor') is more to my 
AS>  taste.


          Suits me... [chuckle].



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

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


          Once again, your initial impression may not be as far off the mark as you think.  IIRC Picasso said it took him sixty years to learn how to draw like a child (or possibly to unlearn what others tell children they should do).  :-Q



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

AS>  I believe `forte' refers to the attack of the sound rather
AS>  than to its volume -- a term I know not from music but from
AS>  electroacoustics.  Yours is a fine point in both senses. 


          In my youth I also studied acoustics, and while my own experience has more to do with instruments like the violin & the clarinet than with electronic instruments I think you see my point.  An accent mark or a sforzando is used to indicate the attack, but what happens next is quite a different matter....  :-)



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


          Thank you... and the same back to you!  For Dallas & me last year had many ups & downs, but so far 2023 hasn't been very different... [wry grin].



AS>  P.P.S.: I see you indent the first line of your paragraphs by 
AS>  nine spaces, which may be a typewriter convention. 


          Yes.  Theoretically it's ten spaces for a paragraph & five for quoted material.  As a teacher, however, I do take some liberties in EchoMail....  :-)



AS>  But they having no line breaks, each one is essentially a very 
AS>  long single line, whose proper display depends on whether and 
AS>  how the client software re-flows it to screen width. 


          Uh-huh.  Some of my Russian correspondents prefer longer lines, where others don't.  Generally speaking I find hard returns counterproductive.

          In English we say "You can't please everybody all the time"....  :-))



AS>  I therefore propose another step towards the typewriter
AS>  canon -- breaking lines at a readable lenght, which
AS>  is usually between sixty-five and seventy two characters.


          Alexander & I discussed the issue awhile ago, and essentially both of us agree with you.  But while I try to divide my words into reasonable chunks I can't necessarily predict how other people's software will interpret them.  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+