Connector Order and Priority

Nexis uses the following order of operations for connector searches:

  1. OR
  2. Proximity connectors such as near/n, w/n, /s, /p, w/sent, w/para
  3. AND
  4. AND NOT
Example: bankrupt! w/25 discharg! AND student OR college OR education! w/5 loan

This search query is processed in this way:

  1. OR has the highest priority, so it operates first. In this example, student or college OR education! is processed as a unit, which is created by the OR connector.
  2. w/5 ties together the term loan and the student or college or education! unit.
  3. w/25 operates next and creates a unit of the bankrupt! w/25 discharg! terms.
  4. AND operates last and links the units formed in the second and third items above.