You can use wildcards and truncation when you're looking for documents that contain spelling variants, or words that begin with the same character string.
| Character | Description | Example |
| ? |
Wildcard Character (?) - Used to replace any single character, either inside or at the right end of a word. Multiple wildcards can be used to represent multiple characters. Important to know: A single ? wildcard character will match both zero and one character... meaning cat? will return matches on both cat and cats. Similarly, cat?? will return matches on cat, cats, and catch - 0, 1, or 2 characters in that example. | nurse? Finds: nurse, nurses, and nursed. sm?th Finds: smith and smyth ad??? Finds: ad, ads, adds, added, adult, adopt |
| * |
Truncation Character (*) - Retrieves variations of the search term. Use the truncation character at the end (right-hand truncation) of search terms. Standard Truncation (*) - Retrieves variations on the search term, replacing up to 5 characters. Defined Truncation ([*n]) - Replaces up to the number of characters specified, for example [*9]. The maximum number of characters that can be entered is 20. | farm* Finds: farm, farms, farmer, farming |