Operators and special characters

Boolean operators

Operator	Description	Syntax	Example

OR Searches for items containing either (or both) of two terms. When you enter multiple words or phrases without an operator, the OR is implied. A OR B   AND Searches for items containing both terms. A AND B NOT (-) Prohibit Searches for items containing the first term but not the second term. Cannot be used with a single term. A NOT B   + (required) Searches for items containing the required term and optionally the second term. +A B

Wildcard and proximity characters

Character	Example	Will find
Use an asterisk (*) as a substitute for zero or more characters.	g*t	will find get, great and gt
Use the question mark (?) as a substitute for a single character.	g?t	get and got but not great or grunt
Use the tilde (~) character after a word to find words that differ by one character (added, removed or substituted) from the search term.	color~	colors and colour
	analyze~	analyzes and analyse
Use the tilde (~) character followed by a number to finds words that are within a specified word distance from each other.	"happy busy"~10	Searches for instances of the words happy and busy within 10 words of each other

Other special characters

Character	Name	Use

+ Plus   Indicate words or phrases that must be included - Hyphen Can be used in place of NOT && Ampersand Can be used in place of AND | Pipe Can be used in place of OR  ! Exclamation mark Can be used in place of NOT ( ) Round brackets Groups clauses to form sub queries " " Double quotes Enclose a group of words to enable search for a phrase ~ Tilde Indicate proximity * Asterisk Multiple character wildcard to include any number of characters ? Question mark Single character wild card to include only one character