H2E Library Search Tips

Simple Searches
Simple searches are queries that consist of a single word or phrase.

Examples of Simple Searches

Search Term	Finds Pages That Contain
meet	The string meet and stemmed variations, such as meets and meeting
"meet"	The word meet
"S&L"	The strings S&L, S & L, and S L (always enclose words like S&L in double quotation marks)
<case> NOW	The string NOW in upper case
repetitive stress injury	The phrase repetitive stress injury
zoo*	Words beginning with the string zoo
fl??ss	Words beginning with fl and ending with ss with any two characters in between

Searching With Phrases
The Verity search engine interprets any string of characters separated by spaces as a phrase.

Tip

Be careful of phrase searches that contain the following words because they are operators in the Verity Query Language: And: interpreted as the Verity Query Language AND operator Or: interpreted as the Verity Query Language OR operator Not: interpreted as the Verity Query Language NOT modifier You can still search for phrases containing these words if you enclose them in double quotation marks.

Using Wildcards
You can use wildcard characters if you are not sure of the spelling of your search term to expand your search:

• Asterisks (*) substitute for a string of characters of any length
• Question marks (?) substitute for a particular character

Combining Search Terms
You can combine search terms using Verity Query Language operators and modifiers to refine your searches.

Examples of Combining Search Terms

Search Term	Finds Pages That Contain
crab OR lobster OR shrimp	Any of the words crab, lobster, or shrimp
bank AND loan AND business	All of the words bank, loan, and business
bank, loan, business	Any of the words bank, loan, and business. The more instances of these words in a page, the higher it appears in the results list.
bank NOT river	The word bank but not the word river
HTML <near> publishing	The word HTML close to the word publishing
HTML <sentence> publishing	The word HTML in the same sentence as the word publishing
HTML <paragraph> publishing	The word HTML in the same paragraph as the word publishing

Stemmed Words
When you submit a single word query, the Verity search engine finds documents that not only match the term you entered, but also stemmed variations of the term.

Tip

You can always restrict the search to the term itself by enclosing it in double quotation marks. Always use double quotation marks to enclose terms that include unusual characters like the ampersand in S&L. The Verity search engine automatically expands the search to include variations of the term with and without the unusual character.

CASE Modifier
If you enter your search term in completely in lower case or completely in upper case, Verity search engine looks for all mixed case variations.

Tip	If you are looking for pages about someone named Rose, enter the name with an initial capital letter. To make the search more precise, enclose the word in double quotation marks. When you are searching for abbreviations or acronyms, case is important.

Note	Most Verity Query Language operators and modifiers must be enclosed within angle brackets (<>) to distinguish them from the actual query term. The words AND , OR , and NOT are always treated as Verity Query Language operators unless they are enclosed within double quotation marks.

Punctuation Marks in Queries
Any character without special meaning in the Verity Query Language can be entered anywhere in a query.

The following characters have special meaning in the Verity Query Language.

Character	Description
, ( ) [	These characters end a text token.
= > < !	These characters end a text token because they signify the start of a field operator (! is special: != ends a token).
* @ ` < { [ !	These characters signify the start of a delimited token, which are terminated by the end character associated with the start character.

To search for a string that contains one of these characters, precede the character with a backslash.

Tip	To search for a string that contains a backslash character, enter two backslash characters.