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Adelphi University

Try Truncation

Another technique that can improve your search results is called truncation. Truncating a word means that you are able to search different forms of the same word at the same time.

Truncation requires the use of symbols, called wildcards, to replace word endings (or can be used in the middle of a word) to search different forms of the word. The most commonly used truncation symbols are: * ? #

Using Truncation

Shorten the word to its root and add the truncation symbol. This will retrieve all similar, singular, and plural forms of the word. For example, typing the root word "vege*"  will retrieve "vegetable," "vegetables," "vegetarian," "vegetation," etc. Truncation can save time and expand your search to include related words. Make sure you do not truncate the word with too few letters or you may get results that have nothing to do with your topic.

Replace one letter within a word using the wildcard symbol. For example, "Wom?n" will return "Woman" and "Women".

Using internal truncation can increase your search results to include different forms and spellings of the same word.

Trying to truncate a word with too few letters can retrieve many unrelated and unwanted results.

For example, when trying to search for topics related to “politics” think carefully about where to truncate your search term.

Poli* will return Politics, Political, but also Police, Polio, etc.