American Bar Association Search Tips
A query can be just a word or a phrase. But with the tips on this page, you can expand the focus of
your query to give you more complete results. These tips will get you started
with basic query
language and acquaint you with the full power of Search Engine.
- Consecutive
words are treated as a phrase
they must appear in the same order
within a matching document.
- Queries are case-insensitive, so you can type your query in uppercase or
lowercase.
- Look
for words with the same prefix. For example, in your search box type key*to find
key, keying, keyhole, keyboard, and so
on.
- Search
for all forms of a word. For example, in the form type to find sink, sinking,
sank, and sunk.
- You
can search for any word except for those in the exception list (this
includes a, an,
and, as, and other common words), which are ignored during a
search.
- Words
in the exception list are treated as placeholders in phrase and proximity
queries.
For example, if you searched for "Word for Windows", the results could
give you "Word
for Windows" and "Word and Windows", because for is a noise
word and appears in the
exception list.
- Punctuation
marks such as the period (.), colon (:), semicolon (;), and comma (,) are
ignored during a search.
- To
use specially treated characters such as &, |, ^, #, @, $, (, ), in a
query, enclose your
query in quotation marks (").
- To
search for a word or phrase containing quotation marks, enclose the entire
phrase in
quotation marks and then double the quotation marks around the word or words
you want
to surround with quotes. For example, "World-Wide Web or
""Web""" searches for World-Wide
Web or "Web"
The
following table shows how to use Boolean searches
| AND |
-
Documents that include the words Environment, and
laws Each of the search terms you type in should appear in the
results.
-
For example, if you search for Environmental laws,
the results will contain anywhere in the document.
|
|
OR
|
|
|
NEAR
|
- Search with the keyword NEAR, rather than AND, for words close
to each other.
- For
example, both of these queries, environment and law and environment
near law, look for the words environment and law on the same page. But
with NEAR, the returned pages area ranked in order of proximity
- The
closer together the words are, the higher the rank of that page
|
|
NATURAL LANGUAGE
|
-
With Natural Language queries you can enter any text you
want, from a proper question, to a string of words and phrases, without
worrying about the query language.
- For
example, if you type in the following query: "How
do I use the Index Server Natural Language features?
- Search
will create a query for you automatically and begin the search.
Note that when you're using free text queries, the regular query
language features are disabled and keywords such as AND,OR,
and NEAR are interpreted as
normal words.
|
|
Double Quote ""
|
- Put
quotation marks around keywords if you want Index Server to take them
literally.
- environmental law.
Index Server will
literally look for the complete phrase environmental law.
- This
search will return the fewest number of search results.
|
|
@
|
- You
can use this symbol to retrieve files which is before or after certain
dates.
- For
example, @write > 98/1/1 10:00:00 All the files after this
specific time will be returned to the result page. Time can be omitted
but not date.
|
|
*
|
- The
wildcard character (*) can match words with a given prefix. The
query esc* matches the terms "ESC," "escape," and so on.
|
Click here to return to the search page.
|
