Wild cards

• Wild cards enable the search for multiple words with the same root or for multiple spellings of words.
• This is usually done through the use of an asterisk ["*"] or question mark ["?"] or other symbol to act as wild cards for one or more letters.
• This is just like the Joker in a card deck can act as any other card.
• There are a variety of strategies for using wild cards depending on the database.
• Examples:
  • wom?n in a Dialog search could result in documents containing the words "woman" "womyn" or "women"

    sta*d in an AltaVista search could result in the retrieval of documents containing the word "started" "stapled" "stammered" etc. because the asterisk "*" is the wild card for up to 5 letters.

Truncation

• When a wild card is used at the end of a word, this is called "truncation."
  • hors* would result in the documents in the results with one or more of the following words:

    "horse" "horses" "horsey" Horst" "horsine" etc.