Use wild cards, if you are unsure of the spelling of a word.
Wildcards also enable a search with words with various spellings or word forms.
Wild cards are not natural language, but you can use them to increase your search ability.
Wild cards (especially the asterisk *) are used in many databases and Internet search engines.
Here are the wild cards used in InfoTrac resources in LIRN:
?
Use a question mark (?) if you are unsure of the spelling of ONE letter of the word.
Is it spelled with an e or an a? Is the word calender or calendar? Type calend?r in your search.
Is it dependence or dependance? Type depend?nce in your search. The database will find the keywords with the correct spelling.
A question mark (?) is also useful, to find words with variant spellings, when the words are the same length.
For example, licen?e finds both license (American spelling) and licence (British and Canadian spelling).
Gr?y finds both grey and gray as keywords.
!
Use an exclamation point (!) to find words with different spellings, where the length of the word is different, by one character.
For example, col!r finds both color and colour.
*
Use an asterisk (*) to find different forms of the same word, with the same root.
For example, experiment* finds experiment, experiments, experimental etc.
veget* finds vegetable, vegetation, vegetarian
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