This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Using Wildcards
Searching with wildcards—sometimes referred to as truncation—means using a special character, typically an asterisk, to indicate that you want to look for variations on a particular word: for instance, you might enter medic* to find references to medical, medicine, medicinal, and medication.
Rules differ from one search engine to the next, but most require that you use at least three other characters along with the asterisk. And it's usually a good idea to also include at least one specific keyword in your query ( Figure 3.10 ). Otherwise, your search may take painfully long and return too many hits to be truly useful.
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Figure 3.10 A wildcard search is likely to be excruciatingly slow unless you include at least one other, specific term in your search request, as shown here.
Tips
- Some search engines allow you to place wildcard characters in the middle (or even at the beginning) of a word.
- You may be given a choice between two different wildcard symbols, depending on whether you want to search for multiple characters or a single character.
- For specifics on using wildcards with a particular search engine, see the Quick Reference guides in Parts 2 and 3 of this book.