| Truncation
Truncation
is the use of a wild
card character or
symbol
to stand for alternate
endings attached to a stem word.
Truncation is especially useful for retrieving
the singular and plural forms of most words.
Example:
alcohol?
retrieves
- alcohol
- alcoholism
- alcoholic
- alcoholics
- alcohols
Almost
all databases support truncation, but they vary
in terms of which character is the wild card.
The two most common are ?
and *,
but database help
screens always tell you. Whichever
character is used by a database, they work the
same way.
Be
Careful:
Be sure you don't truncate too far into a word.
For instance pol?
retrieves
- politics
- political
- policy
- police
- polygamy
- polyhydroxy
etc.
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