Searching With Single Words

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. For example, if you enter the following query, the Verity search engine finds not only pages that contain the word meet, but also pages that contain meets and meeting.

Tip

You can always restrict the search to the term itself by enclosing it in double quotation marks. For example, the following query finds pages that match only the word meet:

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. For example, this query finds pages that match S&L, S & L, and S L:

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. For example, both of the following queries will find pages that match stemmed variations of rose, Rose, and ROSE.

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, as in the following example.

When you are searching for abbreviations or acronyms, case is important. For example, if you are looking for pages that refer to NOW (the acronym for the National Organization for Women), use the CASE modifier and enter the search term in upper case.

In this example, the CASE modifier finds only the acronym and eliminates pages that match now in lower case.

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.

TYPO Operator

The TYPO operator can be useful if you are searching through documents that have been scanned using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, which sometimes misreads words from the input document. The TYPO operator performs "approximate pattern matching" to identify words similar to the query term. The similar words can have characters inserted, deleted, or transposed.

For example, the following string finds pages that match either the word receive or the word recieve (the letters "e" and "i" have been transposed).

Note

By default, the TYPO operator matches words with up to two character insertions, character deletions, or transpositions in any combination. The above sample query would find not only receive and recieve, but also receipt (the letters "v" and "e" have been replaced by "p" and "t"), deceive (the letter "r" has been replaced by the letter "d"), and decieve (the letter "r" has been replaced by the letter "d" and the letters "e" and "i" have been transposed).

Tip

The TYPO operator is also a good way to search through collections that contain documents written either in US or UK English.

For example, the following string finds pages that match either the word behavior or the word behaviour (the letter "u" has been inserted).