Truncation and wildcards
Traditionally on-line database searching allowed the use of truncation of search terms. This used a symbol such as ~ to represent one or more letters at the beginning or end of a word. For example, ~fuse could lead to refuse, defuse or infuse and refus~ could lead to refuse, refuses, refused or refusing.
In Internet searching this symbol would be called a Wildcard. Two types of Wildcard exist, commonly represented by ? and *.
? indicates the replacement of one character
* indicates the replacement of any number of characters.
Wildcard symbols can be used in the middle of a word, not just at the beginning and end, eg: familiari?e for familiarise and familiarize.
You must keep in mind the pitfalls of over-enthusiastic use of wildcards or truncation. For instance, men* would encompass both men's and menstruate, the latter term being unlikely to be relevant to a search on a male-related topic.
Of course the search engines have their own rules. Google for instance does not have this feature. It carries out its own version of using extensions of words automatically. Many search engines use complex algorithms to produce their results which makes the use of wildcards or truncation inappropriate.
Most sites which permit wildcard searching will indicate in their Help section which symbols are to be used for these. One search engine which does allow this is Exalead at http://beta.exalead.com/search
Let's have a look now at Non-obvious search terms ...
