It is known that the sequence 1, of lengths of blocks of identical symbols in the Thue-Morse sequence has several extremal properties among all non-periodic sequences of the symbols 1 and 2. Its generatingIn terms of combinatorics on words, for any given x ∈ (0, 1) and > 0, we prove that every non-periodic word of an alphabet {1, 2} has a suffix s whose generating function S(x) satisfies the inequality xS(−x) > 1−W (−x)− . Using this, we prove several bounds for the largest and the smallest limit points of the sequence of fractional parts { b n }, n = 0, 1, 2, . . ., where b < − 1 is a negative rational number and is a real number. Our results show, for example, that, for any real number = 0, the sequence of fractional parts { (−3/2) n }, n = 0, 1, 2, . . ., has a limit point greater than 0.466452. Furthermore, for each integer b −2 and each real number / ∈ Q, we prove that lim inf n→∞ { b n } ∞ k=1 (1−|b| −(2 k +(−1) k−1 )/3 ) and show that this inequality is sharp.