At this point in your search process, you are moving from merely identifying main concepts and similar search terms to developing more complicated search statements that can do more precise searching.

Use Quotation Marks for Phrases

Put quotation marks around any phrases among your terms so that the phrase is what’s searched for, rather than the separate words. “Common cold” instead of common cold is a good example. Without those quotation marks, just think how many sources Google or other search tools would waste their/your time on things that have nothing to do with our sniffles.

Putting a phrase in quotes returns results containing that phrase, and not the individual words.

Use Wildcard and Truncation Symbols to Broaden

Consider whether using wild card or truncating symbols would help find variations of a word(s). For instance, the wildcard symbol in wom?n finds both woman and women, and the truncating symbol in mathematic* finds mathematics, mathematically, mathematician, etc.

Using wildcard characters allows you to find variations on a word.

ACTIVITY: Wildcards and Truncation

Open activity in a web browser.

Consider AND, OR, NOT

You can often do more precise searching by combining search terms by using the words AND, OR and NOT. These are known as Boolean Operators. Generally, using these operators narrows your search, making it more precise.

The Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT exclude or include subsets of sources.

AND – If the main idea contains 2 or more ideas, you’ll want to use AND to combine them. To look for information about spiders as signs of climate change you’ll want to have both terms in the search and are performing an AND search. That’s what automatically happens in search engines such as Google and Bing unless you tell them to do something different by using OR or NOT.

OR – If the main idea has several synonyms, use OR to combine them. Most search tools search for all terms (AND) by default, so you need to use the term OR between terms to let it know you want to find any of the terms. In the previous example of Latino small business growth, we would want to also use the term Hispanic.

NOT – If the main idea has a common use you want to exclude, use NOT to exclude that word. For example if we were looking for information about illegal drug use we would want to exclude prescription drugs from the search results. This is commonly done with NOT or the use of the Minus (-) sign. (When using some search tools, use AND NOT before the term.)

Using Parentheses with Multiple Operators

When a search requires the use of more than one Boolean operator, use parentheses to group the terms with each Boolean. Doing that usually involves putting parentheses, quotation marks, and Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT or their symbols) in specific places in the search statement. (The operators or symbols used can vary from search tool to search tool, but the concepts are the same.)

The resulting arrangements connect terms, remove terms, and organize search terms in complex ways, much like you might write mathematical statements.

Parenthesis are used with Boolean operators to combine terms for complex searches.

Being skillful at this task of envisioning the effects Boolean operators have on a search can help you troubleshoot your own arrangements when they aren’t turning up what you expected.

Practice with Search

Take some time to practice searching precisely – start by identifying main concepts, then listing related terms (with the help of wildcard and truncation symbols), and finally constructing search statement.