# One clause struck out, and the sheet keeps both versions

> A room's rules in block capitals on ruled paper, ratified by two signatures in two different hands, with the nine o'clock clause crossed out and ten written in above it.

August 21, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-agreement-with-two-signatures

A torn sheet of blue-ruled exercise paper fills the chest of an ecru tee. RULES FOR THE ROOM across
the top, underlined. KNOCK FIRST. NO SWAPS BACK. Then LIGHT OFF AT TEN. in a smaller hand, sitting
above LIGHT OFF AT NINE with one heavy ruled line drawn through it. Two signature lines at the foot,
each marked SIGNED: a looping scrawl on the left that runs past both ends of its rule, and r.m.
dalley on the right, written small enough to fit.

Nobody copied this out again once the argument was settled. The old clause is still on the page,
under the line that killed it.

## Why does a sheet of rules need two signatures at the foot?

Because a rule nobody has signed is a suggestion, and the two people who wrote this one knew the
difference.

The rules take up most of the sheet, but the apparatus is at the bottom: two ruled lines, each
labelled SIGNED, side by side rather than one above the other. Side by side is the arrangement you
use when neither party is approving the other's document. It is the shape of a thing agreed rather
than issued, and it is the reason the sheet reads as an agreement instead of a list taped to a door.

## What do the two hands at the foot tell you?

That two different people signed it, and that one of them had considerably more to say about it than
the other.

The left signature is a big looping scrawl that overruns its line at both ends. The right one is r.m.
dalley, level and small and finished well inside the rule. Neither party is described anywhere on the
sheet; the difference between the two hands does the whole job without a word of narration, which is
the same evidence [a form filled in by two people ends up
carrying](/stories/the-different-handwriting-on-the-same-form).

## Why was the nine o'clock rule crossed out rather than rewritten clean?

Because a clean copy would have thrown away the part worth keeping — that the rule changed, and
roughly when.

One heavy ruled line goes through LIGHT OFF AT NINE, and LIGHT OFF AT TEN. sits above it in a
smaller, shakier hand. Both are legible. A fresh sheet would have produced a document claiming ten
had been the rule all along. Leaving the strike visible dates the paper from the inside: the
amendment is in a different hand and a later ink, so the order of events reads straight off the page.
A code revisited [over several summers accumulates the same
layers](/stories/the-rules-that-were-amended-every-summer).

## Does printing a set of house rules like this need anybody's permission?

No. Rules two children wrote on exercise paper belong to the two of them, and nothing on this sheet
points at anyone else's property.

The wording, the layout and the signatures here were invented for the design; the name reading r.m.
dalley is nobody's. Working from a real sheet out of a real drawer is a domestic question rather than
a legal one — the handwriting is the household's own, and the two who signed it will be old enough to
have a view about their own hand going out in public. Asking them beats deciding for them. Style has
no owner. A work does: somebody else's published line, character or crest is licensable, worth
clearing if a real one is the point, and not worth the paperwork if it is not.

## Would this work with a different set of rules on it?

Yes, and the choice that carries the design is which clause has actual force in it.

KNOCK FIRST. is a courtesy. LIGHT OFF AT TEN. is a curfew an adult would have set anyway. NO SWAPS
BACK. is the one with teeth, because it forecloses regret — it says the trade stands after you have
worked out what you gave away. A sheet built out of courtesies reads as decoration. One clause that
shuts a door behind the people who wrote it makes everything around it look load-bearing. Plenty of
household rules run for years [without ever reaching
paper](/stories/the-rule-about-who-goes-first); the ones that get written down tend to be
the ones somebody wanted on the record.

## Doesn't the crossing-out make the whole sheet look like a mistake?

It looks like a correction, which is a different thing — corrections are what a document in use looks
like.

A sheet with no marks on it has either been obeyed without incident or abandoned. This one was argued
with and survived the argument, and the strike-through is the proof. At chest size the ruled line
through NINE is the first thing that reads from across a room, the smaller TEN above it is the
second, and the order of those two readings is the design. Take the correction out and you have a
list.

## Does it print well?

Yes — flat black hand lettering on a paper ground, hard edges throughout, and nothing that depends on
soft tone.

The ruled paper is the part to watch. Pale blue lines at close spacing sit near the floor of what a
weave will hold, so they want to be drawn heavier and further apart than real exercise paper, and the
red margin rule wants to stay one clean stripe. Three inks covers it: black for the lettering and the
strike, blue for the ruling, red for the margin. The sheet's torn edge is the print's edge, with no
box drawn round it. On ecru or bone the paper ground barely needs printing at all, which is the
garment colour doing half the work.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the sheet at [JustOG](/) — which rules, which one gets struck out, and whose hand signs
where.
Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to
order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

The line through NINE is heavier than anything else on the page. Somebody pressed hard.