| Truncation |
Asterisk: * |
child* retrieves documents with child, children, childbirth, childbearing, childish, and so forth. |
| Wildcard (single character) | Question mark: ? | wom?n retrieves documents with woman, women, or womyn . |
| Phrases |
Adjacent words automatically treated as a phrase; no special punctuation required. |
north pole retrieves only documents in which the words north and pole appear next to each other, in that exact order. |
| Boolean operators | AND, OR, NOT |
lincoln AND douglas retrieves only documents that contain both lincoln and douglas. lincoln OR douglas retrieves documents that contain either lincoln or douglas. |
| Proximity operators |
Wn terms must appear within n words in the specified order. Nn terms must appear within n words of one another, in any order. |
henry W2 thoreau retrieves documents with henry david thoreau or henry thoreau. henry N2 thoreau retrieves documents with henry thoreau, henry david thoreau, or thoreau, henry david. |