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Using wildcard characters and truncation lets you easily combine or eliminate search terms, making your search simpler.

Use an exclamation mark (!) to find a root word plus all the words made by adding letters to the end of it.

EXAMPLE:
acqui! would find variations on the term acquire such as acquires, acquired, acquiring, and acquisition

CAUTION: Use ! only on unique roots; fir! will find fired, firing, and fires, but will also find first, which you may not want.

Use an asterisk (*) to replace characters anywhere in a term, except the first character. Use one asterisk for each character you want to replace.

EXAMPLE:
wom*n would find woman and women
bernst**n would find bernstein and bernstien

Use the asterisk to hold a space for variations in spelling at any point in a term.

EXAMPLE:
bernst**n would find both the ei and the ie spelling of the name.

If you use asterisks at the end of a term, they do not all have to be filled, but may find up to the specified number of characters.

EXAMPLE:
transplant** would find transplant, transplanted, transplanter.

Note: transplant** does not find transplantation or transplanting, because only two wildcard characters are used. To find all the variations of transplant, use the "!" wildcard character instead of the asterisk.
 

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