| Term
Extenders and Universal Characters (! And *): |
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The asterisk
(*) is used as a "wild card" or single character placeholder (known as
a "universal character") in a search. Using an asterisk in place of a letter
in a search term indicates that any character may occupy that space in
the search results.
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"
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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.
For
example, the search term "wom!" will return all words starting with those
three letters, including "woman" and "women," but also "womankind," "womb,"
"wombat," and so forth.
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Because
some stems are roots for a large and diverse group of words, the root expander
should be used with some caution.
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| Taken
from materials initially prepared by Peter Hook and Paul Callister for
the Class of 2003. |
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