English 2-4
Boolean
AND - Narrows; use “and” between your keywords that express different concepts. “And” tells the computer you only want to see records with both keywords.
Ex. flower* AND rose* AND thornless*
OR - Broadens; when two or more words describe your topic equally well (synonyms), connect them with “or.” This tells the computer you want to expand your search by having it find records with any of your keywords in them.
Ex. cat* OR feline*
NOT - Excludes; The example below will result in articles that contain the term cat, but not the term pet. However, it will also exclude potentially useful articles on cats with just a passing mention of them as pets, so be cautious when using “not.”
Ex. cat* NOT pet*
Boolean practice
Which truncation would I use in the following situations:
Choices: AND NOT OR
If I were writing a paper on naming of baseball stadiums, but I don’t care whether it is Major League or Minor.
If I were writing a paper on fast food advertisements from three specific companies.
If I were writing a paper exclusively on mudslinging in political ads, but I don’t want to focus on the last election.
OR
AND
NOT
Truncation
The * form of truncation allows other forms of your keyword by cutting the end of the word off and adding the asterisk * (Shift-8) to the end. It will then retrieve every word that starts with that beginning.
Hero* = Hero, Heroes, Heroic, Heroism, etc.
Be sure to not truncate too early in the word.
Exam* = Exam, Exams, Example, Examples, Examination, Examinations…..
Truncation ALWAYS comes at the end of a word.
Truncation practice
What are two possible results I could receive with the truncation educat*?
Is mov* a good truncation if you were writing a paper on movies? Why/Why not?
What would you use to find evaluate, evaluation, evaluates?
educate, education, educational, educator, etc.
No, because words like “move, moving, movement, etc.” would be included as well.
evaluat*
Wildcard
The ‘?’ wildcard can be used in the middle of a word to take the place of one character.
Wom?n = Woman, Women
If you were missing more than one character, you can add in multiple ‘?’ wildcards.
G??l = Goal, Gill, etc.
Wildcard
Another reason wildcards should be used for differences of spelling in other countries, in particularly, the difference in British vs American English spelling.
Ex. American = color British = colour
wildcard = colo?r
Wildcard practice
What are two possible variants I could receive with the wildcard p?ll?
What would you use to find both the American and British spellings of behavior/behaviour?
pill, pull, etc.
behavio?r
Search terms
Search terms are important; however, they aren’t just your thesis statement.
For example, you couldn’t just type in your thesis statement and find sources.
You need to pick out which terms are the most important in your thesis and search for those.
Let’s say our thesis is this:
More attention should be paid to the food and beverage choices available to elementary school children.
Our main search terms would be FOOD, BEVERAGE, ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, and CHILDREN.
Synonyms
Sometimes, we don't get the search results we need from just those search terms though. Sometimes, we need to use synonyms.
Remember, our thesis is this:
More attention should be paid to the food and beverage choices available to elementary school children.
Here, we could use the synonym KIDS for CHILDREN or DRINKS for BEVERAGE.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Once you pick your topic, then find your search terms and synonyms, then you can add in the truncation, Boolean, and wildcard.
Here’s our example thesis again:
More attention should be paid to the food and beverage choices available to elementary school children.
SEARCH TERMS: Our search terms would be what’s in red.
SYNONYMS: We could also search for drinks and kids.
TRUNCATION: We could truncate child* to search for child or children and beverage* to search for both beverage and beverages.
WILDCARD: There isn’t a good place for the wildcard here.
BOOLEAN: We could search for food AND drink