An awkward feature of the standard fine structure theory of the Jα's (see Jensen [72]) is that special parameters are required to make good sense of the notion of “Σn Skolem hull”, parameters which may not be preserved in condensation arguments.

The purpose of this article is to indicate how a reformulation of Jensen's Σ* theory (developed for the study of core models) can be used to provide a more satisfactory treatment of uniformization, hulls, and Skolem functions for the Jα's. Then we use this approach to fine structure to formulate a principle intended to capture the combinatorial content of the axiom V = L.