You can allow the computer to look for different endings to your terms.  You will retrieve a greater number of articles by telling the computer to find everything starting with a certain stem. For example:

• manag* will find management, managing, and manager
• operat* will find operation, operator
• Olympi* will find Olympic, Olympian, Olympics

  There are times when you may wish to account for variations in spelling "inside" a word.

1. British versus American spelling practices:
   labour or labor: use lab?r
   organise or organize: use organi?e
   
2. Irregular plural forms: women or woman: use wom?n

Different Databases/Different Symbols
Beware of the different symbols used by various databases for the same function.  Below is a chart telling you the symbols used by three of this library's databases.  If you forget the appropriate truncation symbol while you're searching, you can look back at this chart.

	ProQuest	Lexis-Nexis	Acad. Search Elite
Truncation at end (operat…)	*	!	*
Internal Truncation (wom..n, labo..r)	?	*	?
The "not" connector	And not	And not	Not

 Now go to: