Using Wildcards and Truncation
Use the wildcard and truncation symbols to create searches where there are unknown characters, multiple spellings or various endings. Neither the wildcard nor the truncation symbol can be used as the first character in a search term.
Wildcards
The wildcard is represented by a question mark (?) or a pound/hash sign (#).
To use the (?) wildcard, enter your search terms and replace each unknown character with a ?. EBSCOhost databases will find all citations of that word with the ? replaced by a letter.
For example, type ne?t to find all citations containing neat, nest or next. EBSCOhost does not find net because the wildcard replaces a single character.
Note: When searching for a title that ends in a question mark, the symbol should be removed from the search in order to ensure results will be returned.
To use the # wildcard, enter your search terms, adding the # in places where an alternate spelling may contain an extra character. The database finds all citations of the word that appear with or without the extra character.
For example, type colo#r to retrieve results containing color or colour.
Example: wom!n= woman, women
When using the pound/hash (#) wildcard, plurals and possessives of that term are not searched. For example, when running a search for the term colo#r, the terms "colors" and "colours" will not be searched (which they are by default when using the singular "color" or "colour" without a wildcard operator).
Truncation
Truncation is commonly represented by an asterisk(*).
To use truncation, enter the root of a search term and replace the ending with an (*). The database will return all forms of that word.
Truncation is a technique that allows you to search various word endings simultaneously.
To use the truncation symbol enter the root of a word a and place the symbol at the end of the word.
Example 1: child* will retrieve child, childs, children, childrens, childhood
Example 2: comput* will retrieve computer and computing
Example 3: genetic* will retrieve genetic, genetics, gentically