§ 1.001.Purpose of Code

The code’s own account of what it is, and the phrase to hold onto is "without substantive change".

The code is enacted as a part of the state’s continuing statutory revision program, begun by the Texas Legislative Council in 1963, which contemplates a topic-by-topic revision of the state’s general and permanent statute law without substantive change.

That matters when a provision here reads differently from the statute it replaced. A rewording carried out under this program was not meant to alter the law, and courts approach an apparent change in meaning with that purpose in view.

Four objectives are listed, and each explains something about how the code looks.

Rearranging the statutes into a more logical order — which is why provisions that once sat in unrelated places now share a title.

Employing a format and numbering system designed to facilitate citation and to accommodate future expansion — the chapter-point-section form, and the reason new material arrives as 16.0045 or 125.0015 rather than displacing what is there.

Eliminating repealed, duplicative, unconstitutional, expired, executed, and other ineffective provisions — the tidying that removed a century of dead law.

Restating the law in modern American English to the greatest extent possible, which accounts for the plainer style of the revised provisions beside the older ones the code carried forward.

"To the greatest extent possible" is the qualification that shows in practice. Provisions the revisers left largely alone still read in their original century, and this chapter is why the code contains both voices.