Site Search - The New Coalition for Economic and Social Change

The New Coalition for Economic and Social Change * Site Search

Site Search

Search Hints

This site employs Verity search engine technology, which provides a wealth of search operators. Several of the most useful ones are described below. These hints are derived from Appendix E, “Verity Search Language,” in Macromedia ColdFusion MX Web Application Construction Kit (2003).

CONCEPT OPERATORS allow you to specify more than one search term. You may, but need not, put these operators in <brackets>.

<AND> a document will be returned as a match only if all search words are present
Lee AND Walker
Lee <AND> Walker

<OR> a document will be returned as a match if any of the search words is present.
Lee OR Walker
Lee <OR> Walker

Note: If you search for multiple words without operators--for example, Booker Washington--your search will look for that exact phrase and only that phrase. Such a search would not return documents containing Booker T. Washington, for example. When searching for phrases, you may wish to use the <AND> operator to produce more accurate results.

EVIDENCE OPERATORS allow you to search for words slightly different from your search term. These operators must be enclosed in <brackets>.

<WILDCARD> indicates the search term contains wildcards. You need not specify the <WILDCARD> operator for the question mark (?) and asterisk (*), but you must do so for the others. When you use any <WILDCARD> operator (except * or ?), you must also enclose the search term in single quote marks, as shown in the examples below. You’ll get an error message if you don’t include the quote marks.

Wildcard Purpose

* Stands for any number of characters (including 0). A search for Coa* would find Coal, Coalition, and Coalesce.

? Stands for any single character. A search for Coa? would find Coal, but not Coalition or Coalesce.

{ } The curly brackets enable you to specify a number of word fragments, separated by commas. A search for <WILDCARD> ‘{gr,frag,deodor}rant’ would find documents that contained grant, fragrant, or deodorant.

[ ] The square brackets work like { }, except they represent only one character at a time. A search for <WILDCARD> ‘f[eao]ster’ would find documents that contained fester, faster, or foster.

- The minus sign allows you to place a range of characters within square brackets. Searching for <WILDCARD> ‘A[C-H]50993' is the same as searching for <WILDCARD> 'A[CDEFGH]50993'.

<STEM> expands the search to include grammatical variations of the search term. <STEM> smoke would search for smoking and smoker as well. (Note: Verity uses the <STEM> operator by default in simple word searches. To prevent this behavior, use the <WORD> operator described below.)

<WORD> performs a simple word search without any use of wildcards or the <STEM> operator. <WORD> smoke will return only those documents containing the word smoke, not those containing smoked or smoking.

Proximity Operators specify how close together search words must be within a document for it to count as a match.

<NEAR> specifies you are most interested in documents in which the search terms are close together. The search engine considers as a match all documents in which the words are within 1,000 words of each other, but the closer the words are, the higher the document’s score is.
Walker <NEAR> Booker

<NEAR/N> specifies how close together the words must be, ranking them based on the closeness of the words.
Walker <NEAR/10> Booker

<PARAGRAPH> and <SENTENCE> specify that the search terms need to be in the same paragraph or sentence, respectively.
Walker <PARAGRAPH> Booker
Walker <SENTENCE> Booker

<PHRASE> allows you to search for a phrase of two or more words in a specific order.
<PHRASE> (Lee Walker)

Search Modifiers cause the search engine to behave a little differently than it would by default.

<CASE> performs a case-sensitive search.
<CASE> Governor will return only those documents in which the word governor is capitalized.

<NOT> eliminates documents found by the search term.
<NOT> Walker

<ORDER> can be used with <PARAGRAPH>, <SENTENCE>, or <NEAR/N> to specify that your search terms must be found in the specified order for the document to be considered a match.
<ORDER><PARAGRAPH> (Washington,Booker)

Wildcard	Purpose

*	Stands for any number of characters (including 0). A search for Coa* would find Coal, Coalition, and Coalesce.

?	Stands for any single character. A search for Coa? would find Coal, but not Coalition or Coalesce.

{ }	The curly brackets enable you to specify a number of word fragments, separated by commas. A search for <WILDCARD> ‘{gr,frag,deodor}rant’ would find documents that contained grant, fragrant, or deodorant.

[ ]	The square brackets work like { }, except they represent only one character at a time. A search for <WILDCARD> ‘f[eao]ster’ would find documents that contained fester, faster, or foster.

-	The minus sign allows you to place a range of characters within square brackets. Searching for <WILDCARD> ‘A[C-H]50993' is the same as searching for <WILDCARD> 'A[CDEFGH]50993'.