Phrase Searching
Searching by a particular phrase or word combination is one of the most precise ways of searching. This is done by putting a phrase or terms between quotation marks. For example, if you want to search a phrase like bending towards justice, search it as "bending toward justice" or, if you want to make sure the database searches political activism as a single term and not individual words, search "political activism."
Sometimes it is unclear whether quotation marks are needed and sometimes using them can limit a search too much. For this reason, it can be a good idea to experiment by conducting searches with and without them.
Truncation & Wildcards
Truncation uses an asterisk ( * ) or other symbols such as !, ?, or # to search for multiple forms of the same root word. (Look for the database help page if you are unsure what symbols it uses.) For example:
- Searching gentrif* will find results that include gentrification, gentrifying, and gentrified
A wildcard is a symbol that takes the place of an unknown character or set of characters. Commonly used wildcards are the asterisk ( * ) and the question mark ( ? ). (Look for the database help page if you are unsure what symbols it uses.)
The question mark represents only one unknown character. For example:
- Searching the word wom?n will have results that include women and woman.
The asterisk can represent more than one character. For example:
- If you didn't know whether the spelling was color or colour, searching colo*r will search both spellings.
