Tips: Terms & Connectors Search
A Terms & Connectors search allows you to restrict your search using specific Boolean connectors. For example, you can search within a specific segment of a document, look for various forms of a word, or search for terms within a specific proximity of each other.
These help topics cover the connectors that are available to help you form a Boolean search:
Define Proximity of Search Words
The most basic building block for terms & connectors is the w/n or /n connector, where n = the number of words that can appear between two or more search terms. Using this proximity connector helps you find terms that appear close together in the document.
In this example, the phrase amusement park must be within 10 words of some form of the word liability. (The use of ! as a wildcard will find the words liable and liability.)
To broaden the scope of your search, you could also include the word theme in your query:
Example: amusement OR theme w/2 park w/10 liab!
In this example, the number of results for this search will be slightly larger, because the search is looking for either amusement or theme within two words of park, which must be within 10 words of some form of the word liability. If amusement appears several paragraphs away from park, it may mean the document is less likely to contain information about amusement parks.
Understand Connector Priority
Unless you are using parentheses, Terms & Connectors are processed in the following order:
- OR
- w/n
- AND
- AND NOT
See Connector Order and Priority.
Use Quotation Marks to Find Exact Matches
You can enclose any text in quotation marks to find documents containing that exact text. Quotation marks can also be used to ensure you find documents containing the singular and the plural of a search term. See Using Quotation Marks to Find Exact Matches.
Now you can begin building precise searches that meet a specific criteria to pull up the documents you need.