Search
Advanced Search Tips
A search word can contain the wildcard characters * and ?. A ? in a word matches any single character, and a * matches any number of characters. The wildcard characters can be in any position in a word. For example:
- appl* would match apple, application, etc.
- *cipl* would match principle, participle, etc.
- appl? would match apply and apple but not apples.
- ap*ed would match applied, approved, etc. Use of the * wildcard character near the beginning of a word will slow searches somewhat. Search terms may include the following special characters:
Character Meaning
- ? matches any character
- * matches any number of characters
- % fuzzy search
- # phonic search
- ~ stemming
- & synonym search
- ~~ numeric range
Operators
- And
Use the AND connector in a search request to connect two expressions, both of which must be found in any document retrieved apple pie and poached pear would retrieve any document that contains both phrases.
(apple or banana) and (pear w/5 grape) would retrieve any document that (1) contains either apple OR banana, AND (2) contains pear within 5 words of grape.
- OR
Use the OR connector in a search request to connect two expressions, at least one of which must be found in any document retrieved
Search Results
Weighting of retrieved documents takes into account: the number of documents each word in your search request appears in (the more documents a word appears in, the less useful it is in distinguishing relevant from irrelevant documents); the number of times each word in the request appears in the documents; and the density of hits in each document
