Texas Electrician ExamTexas journeyman & master

Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

Every wiring method has its own article, and they are all cut from one template

The section numbers inside a Chapter 3 article mean the same thing from one article to the next. That is a published rule about how the code is written, not a coincidence, and it is worth more than any single distance you could memorize.

On this page
  1. The template is deliberate, and NFPA publishes it
  2. What each suffix answers
  3. Uses permitted and uses not permitted are one rule read twice
  4. Article 300 is the layer sitting above all of them
  5. Getting from a stem to the right article
  6. The two distances, and why the figure alone will not tell you which
  7. What this chapter is worth on the papers
  8. What this page cites

The template is deliberate, and NFPA publishes it

NFPA writes the code to its own style manual, and that manual tells its committees to use the same section numbers for the same purposes inside articles covering similar subjects. Chapter 3 is where that instruction is followed most closely, because the articles genuinely do cover similar subjects: a method, where you can use it, how you install it, and how it is built.

So the number after the decimal point carries meaning of its own, before you know which article you are in. An article you have never opened is laid out like one you know well, and the lookup you already do fast in Article 334 works the same way in Article 348.

Three Parts do the top-level sorting, and the manual requires them to be titled and numbered with Roman numerals in sequence. Part I is General, Part II is Installation, Part III is Construction Specifications. The scope is always the first section of the article.

Read that as a triage rule. The low numbers decide whether the method belongs there at all. The middle numbers decide how it goes in. The three-digit numbers describe how the product is manufactured, and an exam item almost never lives there, which means the last third of most method articles is not worth your reading time.

What each suffix answers

These are the ones worth holding. The book will fill in the rest once you are on the right page.

The manual says committees use these numbers to the extent possible, not always, and that qualifier does real work. Some articles have no bends section because the method does not bend. Some carry sections nothing else has. And the positions themselves can move: listing requirements sat at point six in the edition most people studied from, and the 2026 book pulled them forward to point two.

And a suffix can move. Article 344 shuffled section numbers this cycle, with the committee recording that it did so to keep the numbering sequential after new sections went in. We are not printing what those numbers landed on, because the draft that records the change is marked up in a way that cannot be read back cleanly, and a wrong number is worse than no number. Find the section by its title.

Uses permitted and uses not permitted are one rule read twice

A method article states where the method belongs and then, in a separate section immediately after it, where it does not. Candidates read the first and skip the second, and the second is where the items are.

The two are not independent lists. On several articles the prohibition section closes the loop by barring the method from anything the permitted section did not name, so silence in the first list becomes a prohibition in the second. On others it does not, and the prohibition list stands on its own. That difference decides items, so read both sections every time rather than deciding from one.

Almost every entry on either list carries a qualifier, and the qualifier is usually the whole question. An entry that looks like a flat ban on a building type turns out to reach only that building type in a named condition, or to defer to another article that narrows it. Read to the end of the sentence, then read whatever is printed underneath it, because an exception in this code sits below the rule it modifies rather than beside it.

The cable articles are where this bites hardest and where the qualifiers have been worked through case by case. That is a page of its own.

Article 300 is the layer sitting above all of them

Every Chapter 3 item has two possible homes, and knowing which one you are in is most of the speed. Article 300 carries the general requirements for wiring methods and materials, and a method article modifies them for its own method. Neither one is complete on its own.

The split is cleaner than it sounds once you look at what each side is about. Article 300 is about the building. Boring and notching framing, running under a roof deck, going in a trench, how long a free conductor has to be at a box, where a box is needed at all, and the general obligation to secure and support. The method article is about the method. Trade size limits, conductor count, how a bend is made, what fitting terminates it.

So sort on what the scenario spends its words describing. A stem that talks about a stud, a joist, a trench or a ceiling cavity is an Article 300 item even when it names a cable type in passing. A stem that talks about trade size, bends or a connector is a method article item even when it describes a wall.

One warning about Article 300 specifically. Its section numbers moved for the 2026 edition and the old numbers are not vacant, which makes a stale tab worse than no tab. That is worked through on its own page and is not repeated here.

Getting from a stem to the right article

Two moves, in this order, and the order is what keeps you off the wrong page.

  1. Name the method. Nothing else in the item matters until you have it, because the article number follows from the method and from nothing else.
  2. Name the question. Match it to one of the suffixes above, then go straight to that section instead of reading the article from the top.

The chapter is laid out in blocks, which is what makes the numbers worth holding. Twelve cable articles run from 320 to 340: 320 armored, 330 metal-clad, 334 nonmetallic-sheathed, 336 power and control tray, 338 service-entrance, 340 underground feeder. The conduits and tubings pick up after them: 342 intermediate metal, 344 rigid metal, 348 flexible metal, 350 liquidtight flexible metal, 352 rigid PVC, 355 reinforced thermosetting resin, 358 electrical metallic tubing, 362 electrical nonmetallic tubing. Then the support systems, with 392 cable tray at the end of the useful stretch.

Those article numbers held through the 2026 edition. It is the sections inside them that moved, which is the opposite of what most candidates worry about.

When the stem names no method at all, you are in Article 300 or in a definition. When it names two methods and asks which is acceptable, the answer is nearly always in one of the two uses-not-permitted sections rather than in a comparison, because the code never compares methods to each other.

The two distances, and why the figure alone will not tell you which

Each method article gives an interval measured along the run, from one point of support to the next, and a separate distance measured from the enclosure or fitting the method lands in out to the nearest fastener. They answer different questions.

Do not sort them by size. Several raceway articles set the interval from a table indexed by trade size, so it grows as the pipe grows, while the distance measured from a termination sits at one figure for every size the article covers. At the small end of those tables the two land on the same number, and small trade size is exactly what a dwelling scenario describes.

Sort them by the surfaces instead. One runs fastener to fastener. The other runs fastener to enclosure. That test works on every method article and it does not care what the numbers are.

The rest of it, including what suspends the securing requirement and what the code refuses to accept as support, is worked through separately.

What this chapter is worth on the papers

Electrical Wiring Methods and Electrical Materials carries 10 items on the journeyman knowledge portion and another 2 on the journeyman calculations portion. That is 12 of the 80 scored items a journeyman candidate faces across both papers, from one chapter.

On the knowledge portion it ties for the largest single subject line on the outline, alongside branch circuits and conductors and alongside equipment and devices. A master candidate gets 7 and 2 instead, out of 70 and 30.

The return on learning the template is larger than those counts suggest, because the same shape carries the box and enclosure articles and the general Article 300 material that other subject lines draw on. Learning one article well is not the goal. Learning where things sit inside any of them is.

It also changes what you should tab. Tabbing every method article you might meet is a losing game. Tabbing the chapter opening, Article 300, and the three or four methods a Texas item is most likely to name gets you to the same place with a quarter of the flags.

What this page cites

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Every rule here is cited to the section it comes from, and corrections are logged in public with the date. This is study material rather than electrical advice, and it does not replace your own code book or your inspector.