FEATURES

EXAMPLES

Enclose terms to be searched as a phrase in quotes

"American Medical Association"

"John Wayne"

"We the people"

"there is nothing to fear but fear itself"

Any of these require all the words and characters to be retrieved exactly as keyed, in the same order.

Capitals retrieve only matching capitals in documents.  Lower case retrieves upper or lower and is always safe. 

"World War II" will not retrieve any documents with the lower-case form: "world war II". But "world war II" will retrieve both possibilities.

+ (plus sign)

+detroit +"red wings" chicago retrieves documents which must contain the word detroit and the phrase red wings.  Documents may but not necessarily will contain the word chicago.

- (minus sign)

+detroit +sport* -tigers retrieves documents which must contain the word detroit, must contain the word sport with various endings, but will exclude documents which mention the word tigers

OR allows either term.  Frequently used with parantheses.

("term limit*" or "campaign finance") and(mccain or feingold) retrieves records with any of the first three terms and either of the last two

AND requires all terms to be in records retrieved

election and finance

Both terms will be somewhere in all documents retrieved.