Term Extenders and Universal Characters
•The asterisk (*) is used as a "wild
card" or single character placeholder (known as a "universal character") in a
search. Thus, the search term "wom*n" will return "woman" and
"women."
•A good use for the universal character is
when the spelling is in doubt.
"Lieberman" or
"Leiberman"?--try "L**berman"
•The exclamation point (!) is used in both
services as a root expander (sometimes called a truncation). A root expander allows you to designate a word root (or
stem) in a search and receive all variations on that root.
"wom!" will return all words starting with
those three letters, including "woman" and "women," but also
"womankind," "womb," "wombat," and so forth.
•Because some stems are roots for a large and
diverse group of words, the root expander should be used with some caution.