ProperProse is a serial essay about the way institutions — courts, agencies, landlords, insurers, employers — use a particular grammar to keep ordinary people on the wrong side of a closed door. And the way, episode by episode, we get back through.
Five episodes published. The newest sits on top.
When a court grants you an accommodation under a rule and then quietly narrows it on the record, you have to know how to read what you just won — and what you just lost.
The phrase the rule uses is not the phrase your opposing counsel uses. The gap between the two is where most pro per discovery motions die.
If service is wrong, nothing that follows is right. A short tour through CCP §1010.6, §1013a, and the proof-of-service declaration that holds up.
The minute order is. Why "what the judge said" matters less than what the clerk wrote, and how to make sure the two match.
Where to start when a Register of Actions looks like a wall of acronyms. The five entries that tell you what is actually happening in your case.
ProperProse is written by a single pro per litigant in the middle of a multi-matter civil docket. The thesis is small: the language of power is a craft, and it can be learned. The work here is to teach it back, one short essay at a time, in plain English — without flattening the parts that are genuinely hard.
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