Plurals,
truncation, and wildcards
Plurals
To search for a
word and its plural form, add a plus sign + to the singular form. The
plus + will search for any plural formed with either -s or -es.
For example, giraffe+ retrieves all records that contain giraffe
and giraffes.
To search for the
plural of words that change form, such as mouse or story,
search for both forms and combine them with the Boolean operator OR.
For example, to retrieve mouse and its plural, search for mouse
OR mice.
| If
you type: |
FirstSearch
searches for: |
| mammal+ |
records
containing mammal and/or its plural, mammals |
| wax+ |
records
containing wax and/or its plural, waxes |
| leaf
OR leaves |
records
containing leaf and/or its plural, leaves |
Truncation
Truncation allows
you to search for a term and its variations by entering a minimum of the
first three letters of the term followed by an asterisk *. For example, econ*
retrieves records that contain econometrics, economics, economist,
etc. Be careful when using truncation to search for plurals. A search
for arch* will retrieve records containing not only arch
and arches, but many other unrelated terms such as archdiocese,
Archimedes,and archive.
Note:
Truncation can only be used after the third character. Also, truncation
is currently set to read a limit of 50 index entries; this limit was
devised to achieve better performance by the FirstSearch system and will
result in an error message if the user enters a truncation query that is
too general.
| If
you type: |
FirstSearch
searches for: |
| psychi* |
records
containing psychiatric, psychiatrist, psychiatry,
and psychic |
| ind* |
records
containing index, indexes, and indices, as
well as those containing hundreds of other words that begin with
ind-- such as India, induce, and indolent |
Wildcards
Wildcards are used
to represent from zero to nine additional characters in a search term.
They are useful when you are unsure of spelling, when there are
alternate spellings, or when you only know part of a term. FirstSearch
recognizes two wildcards.
A pound sign #
represents a single character.
A question mark ?,
alone or with a number, represents from zero to nine additional
characters. Include a number if you know the maximum number of
characters the wildcard will replace. Otherwise, use the question mark ?
alone to represent any number of characters within a single term,
including no additional characters.
Note:
Wildcards cannot be used at the beginning of a term.
| If
you type: |
FirstSearch
searches for: |
| wom#n |
records
containing woman and women |
| colo?r |
records
containing color, colour, colonizer, and colorimeter |
| colo?1r |
records
containing color, colour, but not colonizer or
colorimeter |