One approch to understand the singularities of a set X (e.g. of an algebraic subset of ℂ^n) consists in finding a stratification of that set. If a point x ∈ X lies in a d-dimensional stratum, then intuitively, a neighbourhood of x is roughly translation invariant in d dimensions. After replacing ℂ by a suitable field extension K “containing infinitesimal elements” (e.g. K = ℂ((t))), we obtain a precise notion of x having an infinitesimal neighbourhood which is roughly translation invariant in d dimensions. This allows us to define a canonical stratification of X, and by looking at even smaller balls near x, associate some invariants to the singularity at x. I will explain how this works, and hopefully, I will find the time to show, as an example application, how from this, one can recover some information about Poincaré series. This is joint work (in progress) with David Bradley-Williams.