Creating a Search Strategy
Truncation and Wildcards
Truncation
Truncation instructs the database that when you are searching for a free-text keyword search that it should search for the root of the word you have typed in and then retrieve any alternate endings.
This is excellent for searching for plurals without having to type out both the singular and plural in your search but will find also find any other alternative endings (some of which may not be relevant to your topic).
A keyword search for dentist* would retrieve any article which has the word dentist or dentists or dentistry somewhere in the title, abstract or other field. A keyword search for therap* would retrieve any articles where the word therapy or therapies appeared, but would also retrieve articles which included the word therapeutic (likely to be relevant) and also therapist(s) (perhaps less likely to be relevant if you were initially wanting to search for therapies).
| interact* | interact, interacting, interaction, and interactivity. |
| communicat* | communication, communications, communicate, communicating |
| nurs* | nurse, nurses, nursing |
| child* | child, children, childhood |
Wildcards
As well as truncation other wildcards are available to use on some databases. These wildcards differ from database to database so it is worth checking (via their help pages) if you are looking for a particular function on a database platform.
Examples of Wildcards
| Wildcard: | Examples: |
|---|---|
| Use # inside or at the end of a word to replace exactly one character, | e.g. wom#n for women and woman |
| Use ? inside or at the end of a word to replace zero or one character | e.g. robot OR robots, but not robotic; flavo?r for flavor OR flavour, but not flavours |
| Operators can be combined | e.g. an?emi* for anaemia OR anemia OR anaemic OR anemic |
