Web Search Engines
Library Databases
Choosing Search Terms
Connecting Keywords
Truncation & Wildcards
Many databases also use truncation symbols and wildcards to broaden a search. These usually take the form of question marks, exclamation marks, asterisks, and so on.
Placed at the end of a word stem, a truncation symbol tells the database to search for variant endings or forms of words, such as singulars and plurals. Used in place of a letter in the middle of a word, the wildcard tells the database to search for any variation of the word. Using one wildcard symbol will replace one character, but using that wildcard multiple times will replace a fixed number of characters.
Truncation example:
comput* searches for computer, computers, computing, computation, etc.
Wildcard example:
wom?n searches for woman, women, and womyn. Each question mark replaces exactly one letter.
w??k will return records with any term that begins with w and ends with k with two characters in between, such as work, week, walk.
The symbols vary from database to database, so it's important to check the search tips or help screens provided. Some of the more common truncation and wildcard symbols for popular databases include:
| Database | Truncation | Wildcard |
| Academic Search Premier | * | ? |
| Lexis/Nexis Academic | ! | * |
Truncation symbols and wildcards can be helpful in broadening your search; however, they can produce unintended results. Truncating a word like cat* retrieves cat, cats, cattle, catalog, catastrophic and so on.
