baltimoresun.com

NATURAL LANGUAGE SEARCHING

You may enter your search in the same way you would ask a question or speak a word or phrase. Since you are not required to learn special search vocabulary or strategies, natural language searching represents the easiest way to find the information you need. Here are some examples of natural language searches:

Who won the gold medal in the 200 meter
What are the coolest dance clubs

Common words, such as is, a, for, in, and the, will not affect the number of results returned for your search.

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OTHER SYNTAX TIPS

In addition to natural language the search engine supports use of specific symbols within a search string to narrow your results according to specific criteria, or to expand your results. Here are the symbols and some examples of their use:

• " " (double quotes)
  To search on an exact phrase, enter the phrase in double quotes:
  
  "The Chicago Cubs"
  This search is more likely to return results which contain the entire phrase "The Chicago Cubs"
  
  
• + (plus sign)
  If you require that some words or phrases appear in your search results but not necessarily others, use a + sign before that word or phrase that you must have. Any words that are not preceded by a symbol will be considered "may have" terms, which means they may appear in the page, but they are not required to appear:
  
  +Michael +Jordan basketball
  This search would return results which contain the terms "Michael" and "Jordan" but which may or may not contain the term "basketball". Pages which do contain "basketball" would appear higher in the results list than pages which do not.
  
  
• - (minus sign)
  If certain terms must not appear in your results, eliminate pages containing those words or phrases by placing a - sign before the word or phrase. Any term that is not preceded by a symbol will be considered a "may have" term, as above:
  
  +Jordan -basketball baseball
  This search would return pages which contain the word "Micheal" and "Jordan" but not the word "basketball". Pages may also contain the word "baseball" but it is not a required term. As with the example above, pages which did contain the word "baseball" would appear higher in the results list than pages which do not.
  
  
• * (asterisk)
  To search for variants of a word , use a * symbol to replace a series of letters:
  
  John
  This search would return all pages which contain variants on the root "John," including "Johnson,"Johnston"
  
  
• % (percent sign)
  If you wish to replace a single letter in a word, use the % sign. This is useful for words that have different regional spellings, or which are commonly misspelled:
  
  sail%
  This search would return pages containing the words "sail" and "sails" (a common misspelling)