AND, OR, NOT

Use Boolean Operators to Refine Your Search

Boolean Operators (AND, OR, NOT) can be used to tell the search engine more specifically what you want it to do. These are also known as "logical" operators.

If you are only using Boolean operators between two words (entered in either the same search box, or across two search rows in Advanced Search), then the Search Engine handles them as stated below. When you combine 3 or more terms, linked with Boolean operators, then the “Order of Operation” applies (see section at the end of this topic).

Use AND to narrow your search

If you put the word AND between your search terms, that tells the search engine to find only the documents that include all of the terms you connected with the term AND.

Use OR to broaden your search

If you put the word OR between your search terms, that tells the search engine to find documents with any of the terms you connected with the term OR. This will get you get more results than if you connected your terms with AND.

Use NOT to exclude words

If you put the word NOT between two search terms, that tells the search engine to find documents with the first term as long as they don’t have the second term.

Order of Operation

When you create a search query with more than two terms and use two or more Boolean operators the search engine processes that query according to the precedence of the operators. The precedence is NOT, AND, OR. You can determine the precedence by using parentheses in the query.

Whether the query is entered in one search box or spread across multiple rows in an advanced search query the processing looks like this:

user enters: schools AND guns OR violence

is searched as: (schools AND guns) OR violence

and in a hypothetical products returns 769,000 articles. All the articles with schools and guns and all the articles that just contained violence.

user enters: schools AND (guns OR violence)

is searched as shown, and returns 25,700 articles that contain schools as well as either guns or violence.

Note: Operators do not need to be capitalized. If you want to include the operators as search terms, enclose them in quotation marks (for example: "black and white photographs"). All examples are illustrative only and not specific to any one Gale resource.

Proximity

Use Proximity Operators to Define Distance Between Terms

Proximity operators (Nn, Wn) can be used to tell the search engine how closely terms must be to each other within a document. They operate like the AND operator in that both terms must be found.

Use Nn to find terms when order doesn't matter

The Nn (near) operator finds terms n words apart in either direction of the first term.

Use Wn to find terms after the first

The Wn (within) operator finds the second term within n words after the first.

Note: Proximity operators can only be used between two search terms, like fleas n10 dogs or fleas n10 cats. They cannot be used between a term and a nested expression, like fleas n10 (dogs or cats). All examples are illustrative only and not specific to any one Gale resource.

Nesting

Use Nesting Operators to Define Complex Searches

You can use parentheses ( ) in order to specify the order of operations and create complex searches. The order of operations is: parentheses, NOT, AND, OR.

Nesting isn't always needed

Understanding the order of operations is important to determining when parentheses are needed.

Nesting can help with readability

Adding parentheses to a search, even when not strictly necessary, can help make it clear exactly what you want from the search.

Nesting lets you control the order of operations

Without parentheses, the AND operator will always go first. Adding parentheses can change your search to evaluate other operators first.

Nesting lets you add complexity to your search

You can add multiple sets of parentheses to further define searches.

Note: All examples are illustrative only and not specific to any one Gale resource.

Quotation Marks

Use Quotation Marks for Specific Phrases

Use quotations to ensure the search engine finds documents with all the terms in the exact order specified. Using quotations will also ignore any special characters or operators found within.

Without quotes, each term is considered separately

Understanding the order of operations is important to determining when parentheses are needed.

With quotes, the whole phrase will be considered as one

Understanding the order of operations is important to determining when parentheses are needed.

Use quotes to treat operators as regular terms

By default, the search engine will interpret certain terms as operators, like AND, OR, NOT. If you want to ensure your terms are searched as regular terms, add quotes around them.

Note: All examples are illustrative only and not specific to any one Gale resource.

Wildcards

Use Wildcard Characters to Search on Multiple Similar Terms

Using wildcard characters (*, ?, !) allow you to only type part of your search term to search for multiple terms. This is also known as truncation.

Use the Asterisk (*) for the widest search

The asterisk stands for any number of characters, including none.

Use the Question Mark (?) for specific words of known length

The question mark stands for exactly one character.

Use the Exclamation Point (!) for specific word variations

The exclamation point stands for one or zero characters.

Note: A search must include at least 3 leading characters before a wildcard can be used. All examples are illustrative only and not specific to any one Gale resource.

Ignored

Ignored Characters Do Not Affect Your Search

The search engine ignores some characters and will act as if those characters were not included in your search.

Capitalization is ignored

Searches are not case sensitive.

Most symbols and punctuation are ignored

Searches will ignore symbols and punctuation, except for periods and apostrophes. Some ignored characters are replaced with a space, like slash (/), while others are removed, like period (.). In certain cases, search will recognize apostrophes used in contractions or in names and periods in abbreviations.

Gale does not apply a "Stop Words" list

Stop words are common terms that may not add meaning to a search, like "the", "a", "an", "it", and "of". Some databases will remove these "stop words" from your search, but Gale databases leave them in.

Note: All examples are illustrative only and not specific to any one Gale resource.