Article Search Tips - Finding Articles: Wild Cards & Truncation

• A  wild card is a symbol used to replace a letter within a word.

• It can be a different symbol in different databases, but the ? (question mark ) and the * (asterisk) are the most common.

• A search for d?g will find articles with words such as: dig, dog, dug, etc.

• This can be useful if you are searching for a word and are not sure of the spelling.

• It can also cause you to get too many irrelevant results.

Search with a  Wild Card

The search will retrieve these:

• Dogs rule the world.
• Cats dig ruling the world.
• I dug a hole in the ground.

• Truncation is when a symbol is used to replace a string of letters at the end of a word.

• It can be a different symbol in different databases, but the ? (question mark ) and the * (asterisk) are the most common.

• This can be useful if you are searching for a word and want to find things such as plural forms (cats) or are not interested in the tense of the word (finish, finished, finishing)

• It can also cause you to get too many irrelevant results (cat, cats, catapult, cathedral, catheter, etc.), so in this case a search for (cat OR cats) would work better.

Search with Truncation

The search will retrieve these:

• A cat will rule the world.
• Cats dig ruling the world.
• The dog used the catapult to get over the fence.
• The cathedral was beautiful.
• He needed a catheter after surgery.