Proximity

Specify that two or more terms must appear close to one another, e.g. "adjacent" to each other (in any order), "within" the same subject heading, sentence, or paragraph, or "near" (e.g. within 5 words of) each other. This is especially useful for searching full text databases.

For example, in Lexis/Nexis, this search will limit your results to articles with 'diabetes' and 'children' within the same sentence, thus avoiding articles that talk about diabetes in general in one part and mention children in another.

Specific commands for proximity searching vary between databases, so consult each database's help screens to use them properly.