21 NCAC 48C .0101 and 21 N.C. Admin. Code 48C.0101 are two spellings of one address. North Carolina publishes the first, its judges write the second, and a single space separates them.
The space is not a typo. Pull the rule up on the Office of Administrative Hearings site and you get 21 NCAC 48C .0101, subchapter 48C, then a gap, then a rule number that starts with a period. Now open The Guidebook, the citation and style manual the Supreme Court of North Carolina approved in September 2020 for editing its own opinions. Section 1.5 tells you to prepend the chapter or subchapter number to the rule number without an intervening space. So the bench writes 48C.0101 and the publisher writes 48C .0101, and if you search one you will miss the other.
Who puts out what
Two offices, and they keep different habits.
Statutes come from the General Assembly. G.S. 164-10 puts the Legislative Services Office in charge of publishing cumulative supplements to the General Statutes within six months after each General Assembly adjourns. The free text on the legislature's website is handy and fast, but the page carries a heading reading Not Official and a note that the General Assembly will not be responsible for errors or omissions in the files. Treat it as a working copy.
Rules come from the Office of Administrative Hearings. Its Rules Division reviews, compiles and publishes both the North Carolina Register and the Administrative Code, and under G.S. 150B-21.17 the Codifier of Rules has to put the Register out at least twice a month. OAH took the job over on 1 January 1986. Before that, the Attorney General's office handled filing and public inspection, which is why the table of contents still lists a Title 22 with the word Repealed printed after its name.
The two citation forms
For statutes, The Guidebook is blunt. Section 1.3 says to cite the General Statutes as N.C.G.S., and it prints the alternative, N.C. Gen. Stat., marked as the form not to use. The Court otherwise follows the Uniform System of Citation, so this is a chosen departure rather than an accident. Outside briefs and opinions you will see both forms constantly.
Then watch the numbers themselves. N.C.G.S. § 75-1.1 is chapter 75, section 1.1. The 1.1 is the whole section number, not a subsection of a section 1, and splitting it gets you nowhere. Chapters take letters as well. Chapter 15A sits beside Chapter 15 rather than at the back of the book, so a letter in a chapter number is normal and not a transcription slip.
For rules, close the space, and note that the Court's own example leads with the rule's name and closes with a year in parentheses, like Permitted Practice, 21 N.C. Admin. Code 48C.0101 (2018). Cite a cumulative supplement and the parenthetical changes shape to something like (Supp. Feb. 2019).
Read the rule from the bottom
North Carolina rules end with a History Note. It lists the statutes the agency wrote under and every date the rule changed, and it is also where the rule's status lives.
Take 21 NCAC 46 .2503, RESEARCH PARTICIPATION. The page is a handful of lines and none of them are the rule. There is a number, a title, the authorities, an effective date of May 1, 1989, and then the line that decides everything, which says the rule expired effective November 1, 2017 pursuant to G.S. 150B-21.3A.
Compare the live rule from the top of this post. 21 NCAC 48C .0101 carries an original effective date in 1985, seven amendment dates after it, and then a closing line saying that pursuant to G.S. 150B-21.3A the rule is necessary without substantive public interest, effective May 1, 2018. Same statute, opposite outcome, and both facts are at the bottom of the page rather than the top.
Why half the rule book is gone
North Carolina's rule corpus runs to 45,823 sections, and 23,626 of them are no longer in force. That is 23,612 repealed and 14 transferred, or just over half the book.
G.S. 150B-21.3A is titled periodic review and expiration of existing rules, and it puts every agency on a clock. At least once every ten years an agency has to go through all of its rules and call each one necessary or unnecessary, post that call, and take public comment for no less than 60 days. The Rules Review Commission then decides whether a comment has merit and can override the agency by designating a rule necessary. Rules still marked unnecessary at the end expire. Rules that survive do not simply stay put either, because the statute makes the agency readopt them as though they were new rules.
So a North Carolina rule can stop being law with nobody repealing it, and a rule that is still law can carry a determination date decades after its original effective date. Could you answer a currency question from the rule text alone? Not here. The answer is in the History Note.
The statute side is calmer. Of 41,290 sections, 29,049 are in force and 4,640 are repealed, with another 7,577 marked reserved, which means a number held open rather than text you can read.
A worked example
Someone forwards you N.C.G.S. § 75-1.1 and asks whether it reaches a fee dispute with a lawyer.
Open chapter 75 and read the section, not the headline. Subsection (a) makes unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts in or affecting commerce unlawful. Subsection (b) then defines commerce as all business activities, however denominated, and takes out professional services rendered by a member of a learned profession. That exclusion is where the question lives, one subsection below the famous one.
Then read the parenthetical at the end of the section. For 75-1.1 it points at a 1969 chapter and a 1977 chapter rather than at S.L. numbers, because the General Assembly only moved to session law numbering after its 1998 Extra Session. Older cross references will look wrong until you know that.
What will bite you
The space, in both directions. The abbreviation, if you are writing for a North Carolina court. Section numbers with decimals in them. And the History Note, which you should read before the rule and not after it.
Facts used
All North Carolina corpus counts below are from Vaquill AI's US primary law data, measured 2026-09-18.
| Claim | Value | Where from |
|---|---|---|
| Rule sections in the corpus | 45,823 | Corpus, REGULATION |
| Rule sections no longer in force | 23,626 | Corpus, repealed plus transferred |
| Rules marked repealed | 23,612 | Corpus, REGULATION status |
| Rules marked transferred | 14 | Corpus, REGULATION status |
| Rules in force | 21,314 | Corpus, REGULATION status |
| Statute sections in the corpus | 41,290 | Corpus, STATE |
| Statute sections in force | 29,049 | Corpus, STATE status |
| Statute sections repealed | 4,640 | Corpus, STATE status |
| Statute sections reserved | 7,577 | Corpus, STATE status |
| Cite statutes as N.C.G.S., not N.C. Gen. Stat. | Guidebook 1.3 | The Guidebook, 2d ed., Supreme Court of North Carolina |
| Close the space in rule citations | Guidebook 1.5 | The Guidebook, 2d ed., example 21 N.C. Admin. Code 48C.0101 |
| Ten year review, unnecessary rules expire, survivors readopted | G.S. 150B-21.3A | North Carolina General Statutes |
| Codifier publishes the Register at least twice a month | G.S. 150B-21.17 | North Carolina General Statutes |
| Legislative Services Office publishes supplements | G.S. 164-10 | North Carolina General Statutes |
| 21 NCAC 46 .2503 expired 1 November 2017 | History Note | NC Office of Administrative Hearings |
| 21 NCAC 48C .0101 held necessary, effective 1 May 2018 | History Note | NC Office of Administrative Hearings |
| Legislature's online statutes are labelled Not Official | Site notice | North Carolina General Assembly |
| Session laws used chapter numbers before the 1998 Extra Session | Guidebook 1.4 | The Guidebook, 2d ed. |
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Priyansh leads engineering and AI at Vaquill, from the matter workbench to drafting, document comparison, document matrix, and citation-verified research.