In the above section, you see we put “climate change” and “global warming” in quotes. Doing this in your search will bring back only that exact phrase.
There are a few different ways to use truncation symbols or “wildcards” to search for different forms of a word. Here’s an example:
A search for gene* will bring back all these words:
But beware! Make sure you put your wildcard character in just the right spot. The same search will also bring back these words:
See more about what truncation can do for you in this great tutorial from Colorado State.
You can use nesting (parentheses) to help organize a more complicated search. For example, you could search for:
“genetically modified” AND (crop* OR food) NOT (corn OR maize)
to get results about genetically modified food or crops that do not talk about corn, aka maize.