Use the /n connector to find documents in which a given word appears within "n" words of another given word in the same document section. The value of "n" can be any number up to 255. For example, the following search finds documents where the word "cat" occurs within 6 words of "dog":

cat /6 dog

The order in which the words appear within the document does not matter. Therefore, this search finds documents containing the terms "cats and dogs", "dogs or cats", "dog allergens differ from those of cat", and so on.

Similarity to other connectors

The /n connector operates exactly the same as the w/n and near/n connectors. It operates similarly to the onear/n and pre/n connectors, except the order in which the words appear within the document matters to the onear/n and pre/n connectors.

Specifying the value of "n"

Although the value of "n" can be any number up to 255, you may want to choose a number less than 100, as choosing a number larger than 100 may retrieve results in which your search words appear in unrelated contexts. You may find these guidelines useful:

Using multiple /n connectors

Multiple /n connectors are processed from the smallest to the largest.

For more information, see How multiple search connectors are evaluated.