What does “S.W.3d” mean?

When Thomson Reuters (and its predecessors West Publishing Company and Thomson West) includes a Texas appellate court’s opinion in the hardbound South Western Reporters, the company assigns the opinion a citation to facilitate locating the opinion. These citations begin with a volume number and end with a page number. In between the volume and the page number is “S.W.” (an abbreviation for South Western) and a series number (for any series of the South Western Reporter after the first series). So, 4 S.W. 5 would be a citation to volume 4 of the first series of South Western Reporters beginning at page 5. And 6 S.W.3d 7 would be a citation to volume 6 of the third series of South Western Reporters beginning at page 7.

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