The Research Process

Truncation & Wildcards

Truncation lets you search for a word that has multiple endings; this is usually accomplished by placing the asterisk symbol (*) at the point in a word where the spelling would change. For example, librar* would return search results with the terms library, libraries, librarian, and librarians. Truncation is incredibly useful when you know your search term has several possible endings because it allows you to search for all of them in a single search.

There are multiple wildcard symbols you can use in a search.

• Similar to truncation, you can use the asterisk symbol (*) between words where multiple variations are possible. Example: midsummer * dream will return midsummer night's dream and midsummer day's dream.
• The hash symbol (#) can be used as a wildcard for words with alternate spellings. Example: colo#r will return both color and colour.
• Use the question mark (?) wildcard to replace unknown characters. Examples: ne?t will return neat, nest, or next.
  • Caution, a question mark at the end of a word or phrase will be treated as a punctuation mark and not a wildcard.

Wildcards can even be combined! For example: colo#r* will return colorblind, coloring, colorings, colorization, colorize, colorized, colouring, colourings, colourisation...

A note for Google searches, Google automatically truncates search terms. If you search for bank, Google will return results for bank, banker, banking, etc. Use the plus symbol (+) in front of the word to prevent auto-truncation. Example: +bank