InfoSkills for Theology

What is truncation?

Library databases search for the exact terms entered into the search box and do not automatically recognize different forms or variations of those words. To capture a wider range of related terms, you can use truncation – a powerful search technique that broadens your results significantly.

Truncation involves shortening a word to its base or root form and adding a truncation symbol (typically an asterisk *) at the end. This tells the database to find all words that begin with that root, followed by any number of characters (including none).

For example, searching with the root word:

Use truncation carefully!

Placing the truncation symbol after too few letters can return many unrelated results.

For example: 

• man* will return very different words like manual, manufacture, or manager.
  → Use manag* if you're looking for publications about management (possible results: manage, manager, managers, management, managing, managerial).
• art* will return art, arts, and artist, but also unrelated words like article, articulate, and artillery.
  → Use the Boolean operator art OR arts OR artist if you're focusing on visual arts or artists.
• 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 typically replaces one or zero letters within or at the end of a word. Wildcards are especially useful for finding alternate spellings (such as British vs. American English) and plural forms. The question mark (?) is commonly used as the wildcard symbol.

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.