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InfoSkills for Economics and Management

InfoSkills @ TiU

2.5. Truncation & Wildcards

What is truncation?

Library databases look for the exact words that are typed into the search box: other forms of these words are not found. To include various word endings in your search, you can use truncation, a powerful search technique that allows you to considerably broaden your search.

'Truncating' means to cut off something or to shorten. In the context of searching it's cutting of a word and placing a truncation symbol (*) at the end. The database will then return results that include any number of characters including zero) after the cut-off word -- which is called the 'root word'. 

So, a search on the root word:

genetic*

will return genetic, genetics, genetical, genetically, geneticist, and 

invest*

will return invest, investor, invested, investing, investment.

Be careful!

Using the truncation symbol after too few letters may lead to the retrieval of unrelated terms. For instance, 

  • man* will return very different terms like manual, manufacture, or manager.
    Use manag* if you're looking for publications about management (possible results: manage, manager, managers, management, managing, managerial).
  • cat* will return cat and cats, but also cataclysm, catacomb, catalepsy, catalog, catalysis etc.
    Use the Boolean operator OR (cat OR cats) if you're looking for publications about cats.
  • commun* will return relevant variations such as communicate, communication, communicating, and communicative. However, this approach might also unintentionally retrieve results like commune, communism, community.
    Use communicat* if you're looking for publications about communication.

What is a wildcard?

A wildcard usually replaces zero to one letters inside the word or at the end of the word. Wildcards are useful for retrieving alternate spellings (i.e. British vs. American English) and plurals. The question mark (?) is often used as wildcard symbol. 

labo?r

will return labor, labour.

wom?n

will return woman, women.

leader?

will return leader, leaders but not leadership.

Note Not all databases may use the * and ? symbols, so refer to the help screen to see which symbols are supported by the database you're searching.

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