The FastLaws search engine will search the full text of the FastLaws editions of the Texas Penal Code, Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, and Texas Family Code on this web site.

When Your Search Produces No Results

The search engine used by FastLaws does not search for certain words, called stopwords. These are words the search engine regards as too common to index. It also does not search for any word that is shorter than four characters.

One way to include stopwords and short words in your search is to use them as part of a quoted phrase that also includes one or more words that are not stopwords. For instructions on how to search for a phrase, see "Refining Your Search" below.

When You Want to Search Only One Code

You can restrict the results for your search to only one of the FastLaws codes on this site by including in your search query one of the special terms listed below.

If you use one of these special terms, however, you must also use restrictions described in "Refining Your Search" below. If you do not use restrictions on the other search terms, your results will include all sections or articles in the selected code.

To search only the Texas Penal Code use:

+TexasPC

To search only the Texas Family Code use:

+TexasFC

To search only the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure use:

+TexasCCP

Refining Your Search

You can use special characters to restrict the results that will be returned. If you don't use any special characters, all pages containing any of the words in your query will appear in the results. Below are some examples showing how to use the special characters.

If you use no special characters and search for

aggravated robbery

the results will include pages with either of those two words, not just the pages that contain both words.

If you want to find only pages that contain both words, use the following query:

+aggravated +robbery

This search will find pages containing both words, but not limited to the pages that contain the phrase "aggravated robbery".

If you want to find only pages with the phrase "aggravated robbery", use this query:

"aggravated robbery"

If you want to use this phrase and search only the Texas Penal Code, put a '+' before the quoted phrase, and use the Texas Penal Code special term, like this:

+TexasPC +"aggravated robbery"

If you want to find pages with the word "aggravated" but not the word "robbery", use this query:

+aggravated -robbery