Week-6

TRUNCATION  AND  WILDCARD

Truncation and  Wildcard 

 Together broaden  search capabilities by allowing to receive multiple spelling of a root word or stem, such as singular and plural forms.  Truncation is using a wildcard at the end of a root word to search multiple variations of that root word. Check a database’s help to identify a symbol used as a wildcard. Some  databases may allow to use truncation at the beginning of  words or within words, this way is called Internal truncation, consult the files help to determine the availability of this feature. 

Truncation ; truncation expands the search to locate all words beginning with the same root, eg; teen* will return teens, teenage, teen, teenager.

A Wildcard- is a special character, such as  an asterisk(*), question mark(?), or pound sign(#),  that  replaces one or more letters in a word. Usually a wildcard represents a single character. Then a wildcard is used in the middle of a word to match usually known variants of a term. Example;   wom?n  will return woman, women and women.

Phrase Searching - This is when a searcher use a string of words  instead of a single word to search with. When using this way to search  expect  to retrieve fewer results. For the database to understand your search, you should put phrases between in brackets ( ) or inverted commas “ “.  In contrasting  if you don’t  put the words or phrases in a bracket  you will get different result you were not intended to receive.