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TRUNCATION AND WILDCARDS -- EXAMPLES
1. WilsonWeb (Applied Science and Technology Abstracts, Art Abstracts, ArtIndex Retrospective, General Science Abstracts, Humanities Abstracts, Social Sciences Abstracts, Readers’ Guide to Periodicals Literature)
The truncation symbol (*) serves as a substitute for any string of zero or more characters. For example, the search cat* retrieves catatonic, catatonia, category, etc.
The Wildcard symbol (?) serves as a substitute for one character or none. For example, the search m?cdonald retrieves both mcdonald and macdonald; the search dra???t retrieves both draft and draught.
You can use truncation or wildcards anywhere in your search term, except as the first character.
2. OCLC FirstSearch (AGRICOLA, ArticleFirst, Biography Index, Book Review Digest, Consumers Index, Contemporary Women’s Issues, ContentsFirst, Dissertation Abstracts, Electronic Collections Online, Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management, Library Literature, NetFirst, PAISInternational, Proceedings First, RILM Abstracts of Musical Literature, Union Lists of Periodicals, WorldCat)
The plural symbol (+) will search for any plural formed with either e or es. For example, giraffe+ retrieves giraffe and giraffes.
The truncation symbol (*) allows you to search for a term and its variations by entering a minimum of the first three letters of the term. For example, psychi* retrieves records that contain psychiatric, psychiatrist, psychiatry and psychic.
Wildcards are used to represent from zero to any number of additional characters in a search term. A pound sign (#) represents a single character. A question mark (?), alone or with a number, represents from zero to any number of additional characters. For example, wom#n retrieves records containing woman and women; col?r retrieves records containing color, colour, colonizer and colorimeter; col?1r retrieves records containing color, colour, but not colonizer or colorimeter.
3. Congressional Universe, Statistical Universe, Lexis-Nexis
Asterisk ( * ) Use the asterisk ( * ) to replace a letter or letters in a word. You can use more than one asterisk in a word and you can use it anywhere in a word except as the first letter. For example, bernst**n finds the ei or ie spelling of the name; wom*n finds woman and women; bank*** finds any word beginning with bank and that has no more than three letters after the k; will pick up banker and banking, but will not pick up bankrupt or bankruptcy.
Exclamation Mark ( ! ) Use the exclamation mark ( ! ) to replace an infinite number of letters following a word root. You can use only one exclamation mark in a word and it must be at the end of the word root. For example, litigat! finds variations of the word litigate (litigator, litigated, litigation, litigating); acqui! finds variations of the word acquire (acquired, acquiring, acquisition); book! finds book or bookkeeper, but will not find book-keeper or book keeper because these are read as two separate words.
NOTE: Words that work best are those that are unique in their truncated form. For example, if you search for fir! thinking that you want to find "fired," "firing," or "fires"), your results will also include "first," "firm" and so on.
Use the truncation symbol ? to find variants and plurals. For example, theat? for theater, theatre, theatrical.
5. America: History and Life, Historical Abstracts
Use an asterisk (*) for an indeterminate number of unknown characters. For example, econom* polic*
retrieves a very large number of entries—all those that include both some variant of econom (including not only economic and economies but economika, economides, and economica-social) AND a variant of polic (including not only policies but police and policeywissenschaft).
Use a question mark (?) for each unknown letter. For example, e?onom* . In addition to entries retrieved by entering econom*, retrieves entries in which variants like ekonomikos and ekonomsku appear.
6. GeoRef, INSPEC, Philosopher’s Index
The truncation symbol (*) serves as a substitute for any string of zero or more characters. For example, the search cat* retrieves catatonic, catatonia, category, etc.
The Wildcard symbol (?) serves as a substitute for one character or none. For example, the search m?cdonald retrieves both mcdonald and macdonald; the search dra???t retrieves both draft and draught.
You can use truncation or wildcards anywhere in your search term, except as the first character.
7. EconLit, HAPI (Health and Psychosocial Instruments), MLA (Modern Language Association), PsychINFO, Religion Index
Use an dollar sign ($) for an indeterminate number of unknown characters. For example, the search "famil$" would retrieve the words "family," "families," "familial," etc.
8. Web of Science (Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index, Science Citation Index)
You may use the asterisk (*) and question mark (?) to search for variants of words. The asterisk can be used to represent zero to many characters (including no characters). You must have at least three characters before an asterisk. For example, Enter chem* to search for words starting with these letters and ending with any group of letters (e.g., chemistry, chemical, chemist, chemists).
The question mark can be used to represent any single character. For example, enter dermatos?s to search for words that consist of the specified letters with any single letter in the place of the question mark (e.g., dermatosis or dermatoses).
9. Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Dictionary of Literary Biography
The asterisk (*) is placed at the end of the term’s root. The search retrieves all words sharing the same root. For example, the term faith* retrieves essays that contain the words faith, faithful, or faiths.
The ? is used to replace a single character within a word to retrieve various forms of that word. For example, the term wom?n retrieves essays that contain either woman or women.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Search terms that use the ? wildcard character will return no results for searches that are set to be ordered by relevancy, the default sort order. To change your sort order, (1) perform any search without using the ? character, (2) select a sort order other than Score (Document Title, Source, and Type are available), and (3) select New Search in the left-side navigation bar. This will enable you to use the ? character and will also change your default sort order for all future searches until you reset it. Upcoming enhancements will make these steps unnecessary.
10. ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center)
For truncation, the asterisk (*) expands a search term to include all forms of a root word, eg: patent* retrieves patent, patents, patentable, patented, etc. It can also be used to indicate an unlimited number of characters within a word, eg: h*ophilia retrieves haemophilia as well as hemophilia, and behavi*r retrieves behaviour or behavior.
The single-character question mark (?) finds alternative spellings. The ? represents a single character; two ?? represent two characters; three ??? represent three characters, and so on. Use within or at the end of a word, eg: wom?n finds woman as well as women, and carbon fib?? finds carbon fiber or carbon fibre.
11. ArchivesUSA, International Index to Music Peridicals, Periodicals Contents Index Full Text
To execute a truncation search, type the first few letters (stem) of the keyword followed by an asterisk (*).
For example: masse* would retrieve entries for all records containing the words: masse, massed, massenburg, massenet, massenets, masses, massey etc.
When executing a phrase truncation search, only the final word in the phrase can be truncated. For example, social histor* would retrieve records for all articles containing the phrases social history, social historian, etc.
The multi-character (*) and single character (?) symbols can be used within and at the end of words to search for word variants thereby broadening your search.
For example, (using the multi-character * symbol) employ* retrieves records containing employ, employee, employer, employed, employable, employment and (using the single-character ? symbol) wind? Retrieves records containing wind, winds, windy.
13. Anthropological Index Online
If you select the default option to "match anywhere" then truncation is automatic in the sense that it searches for what you put in - no "*" is necessary, and strings will be found wherever they occur.
15. Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS)
In any field where you are entering text, the BAS interprets your data with inherent truncation. This means that typing in "Gluck" in the text box (and selecting "AUTHOR") will retrieve articles by Carol Gluck and also those by Michael Gluckman. Similarly, "India" will retrieve instances of "India" as well as "Indian," "Indians" and even "Indiana". If you wish to force an exact, un-truncated match with a word, place a space after the word. Thus, typing "Gluck " or "India " in a box will eliminate results with Gluckman or Indiana.
16. Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO)
Truncation is inherent with the CIAO search engine. Searching the term "slovak" will retrieve "slovak", "slovakia", "slovakian", etc.
To find any word with multiple endings, enter the truncation character $. For example, to find any word beginning with the letter advertis, enter advertis$. This will look for words including advertise, advertiser, advertising, advertisement. You can also include a number from 1 to 9 after the dollar sign to find words with multiple endings up to the number of characters specified. For example, if you enter advance$1, you will find words including advance, advances and advanced, but not words such as advancement or advancing.
Tip: Enter as many letters as possible before the truncation character. Searching for multiple word endings can slow your search down, so it's helpful to enter as much of the word beginning as you can. If you are only searching for a small number of word variations, such as product or products, enter the terms directly into your search statement rather than using truncation. This will bring you the fastest results.
If you want the search to cover a range of closely related words that differ only in their endings, you can use an asterisk (*) in combination with other letters. For example, anthropolog* will yield articles on anthropology, anthropologist, anthropological, anthropologic, anthropologie, and so on.
Using an asterisk with commonly abbreviated words, such as Nov*, will return articles that use the
abbreviation (Nov.) as well as those that spell out the word (November).
19. Hispanic American Periodical Index (HAPI)
Truncation is automatic. For example, typing "argentin" will retrieve all records containing the words "argentina," "argentine," "argentinian," etc.
20. Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS)
Truncation is automatic if you click on the option: "Search for variants of English-language search words, eg. plurals and derivatives." The results list will include records containing your exact search word(s), plus any records containing words with the same English-language stem(s) [Example: economics, economy, economies].
JSTOR allows you to search for the singular and plural form of a word at the same time, by adding a + to the end of the singular form of the word. The search engine adds s and es where applicable. Searching on cat+ will find cat and cats; box+ will find box and boxes. The search engine doubles s and z before adding es. Searching on bus+ will find bus and busses; quiz+ will find quiz and quizzes. The search engine also changes y to i and f to v before adding es. Searching on sky+ will find sky and skies; knife+ will find knife and knives.
The truncation and wildcard character is the asterisk (*) and may be used in all fields except MR Number and Mathematics Subject Classification (Classification). Important Note: If no wildcard is used, the search will look for exact word matches and for the plural of the words entered.
Place an asterisk (*) at the end of a term to search for all terms that begin with that part of a word. For instance, bacter* will find all terms that begin with the letters bacter, e.g., bacteria, bacterium, bacteriophage, etc. The PubMed automatic mapping system uses only the first 150 variations of a truncated term. If a truncated term, for example, staph*, produces more than 150 variations, a warning message is displayed and only the first 150 variations are used.
You can position truncation/wildcard symbols at the beginning, middle, or end of a query word, and you can combine them within a word (e.g., ?ffect*).
You can use the question mark (?)--to represent a single variable character in a query.
Examples: medic??? retrieves medicine, medicate, etc.; 1?4 retrieves 114, 144, etc.; R??2 retrieves R2D2, etc.
The dollar sign ($) represents one or zero variable characters. For example: colo$r retrieves color, colour, etc. ; V$TOL retrieves VTOL, VSTOL, etc.; electron$$$ retrieves electron, electrons, electronic, electronics, etc.
The asterisk (*) represents a variable string of zero or more characters in a query. For example: medic* retrieves like medic, medics, medical, medicine, medicate, medically, medication, etc.; m*n retrieves man, men, mean, moon, melon, moron, maroon, Manhattan, manifestation, etc.: *ane retrieves bane, lane, crane, plane, profane, insane, membrane, etc.; 1*5 retrieves 15, 175, 1995, etc.
25. Catalog of U.S. Government Publications
Follow a word with an asterisk (*) if you wish to expand the search to all words beginning with those letters.
26. Ulrich’s International Periodical Index
Search terms can be truncated if you are unsure of a spelling or want to retrieve variations on a word. There are three wildcard symbols: $ or * can be used in place of any number of characters. It can only be used at the end of words; ? can represent any single character (including punctuation). It can be used anywhere after the first three characters; ?? can represent any two characters, ??? can represent three characters, etc.
Examples: Comput$ or comput* would retrieve: Compute, computers, computing, computation, etc.;
Brook? would retrieve: Brooks, Brooke, Brooki (use Brook* or Brook$ for Brooklyn, Brookes or Brookings); Jon?? would retrieve: Jones, Joney and Jonas (use Jon* or Jon$ for Jonathan).
Using "$" as the truncation symbol, a search on su="medic$" and kw="wom$" will bring up titles about women and medicine or medical issues.
Use truncation or wildcards in any search if you are uncertain how to spell a word or to match a range of characters.
Examples: * matches any number of characters (Const* will find Constable, Constance, Constantia, Constantine, Construction, Constructivism)
? matches any single character (Sm?th will find Smith and Smyth)
[ ] matches a single character from within the brackets (Sm[iy]th will find Smith or Smyth); specifying a numerical range using a hyphen will find numbers within that range (199[0-9] will match dates from 1990 to 1999).
~ preceding a word matches words that sound alike (~mikelanjelo will match Michelangelo).
You may use the truncation and wildcard symbols. Use an asterisk (*) to indicate any number of unknown characters, and use a question mark (?) to indicate a single unknown character. For example, the string dog* will return "dog", "dogs", "dogg", "dogged", "dogma", "dogue", etc. The string wom?n will return all occurrences of the words "women" and "woman".
30. Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO)
You can truncate words with ? to retrieve plurals and alternate forms. For example, photo? retrieves "photographs" and "photographique"; wom?n retrieves both "woman", and "women" or colo?r retrieves both "color" and "colour".
Return to the Truncation Table
Last updated 11/16/00