• Enter a few words that best describe that you are searching for. To perform more complicated searches you might use any combination of logic operators.

  • Rules of Thumb

    • If you get too many junk or nonsense answers, try:

      • Add some more words to your query.

      • Look at the Match Info and see why they are showing up.

      • Use the Exclusion Operator (-) to remove unwanted terms.

      • If you are searching for a phrase, hyphenate the words together.

    • If you don't get any answers, or just too few:

      • Remove some more words to your query.

      • Examine your spelling.

      • It just might not be there?

  • Keywords Phrases and Wild-cards

    • To locate words, just type them in as you would in a word processor. Letter cases will be ignored.

    • The wild-card character * (asterisk) may be used to match just the prefix of a word or to ignore the middle of something.

    • If the item you wish to locate is more complicated than the simple * wild-card can accomplish, try using the regular expression matcher.

    • To locate a number of adjacent words in a specific order, surround them with " (double quotation) characters. Putting a - (hyphen) between words will also force order and one word proximity.

    • Query Locates
      john john, John
      "john public" John Public
      web-browser Web browser, web-browser
      John*Public John Q. Public, John Public
      456*a*def 1-456-789-ABCDEF
      activate activate, activation, activated, ... *