What is a Wildcard? What is it used for in searching?
Answer
The wildcard is an advanced search technique that can be used to maximize your search results in library databases. Wildcards allow for variations of spelling within a word when searching. They can be used for single letter variations of a word. This is useful for picking up both Canadian/United Kingdom and American spellings of words.
- An asterisk (*)
- A question mark (?)
The asterisk is often called "truncation". For more information on truncation check out the FAQ here.
The question mark wildcard may be used to represent a single character anywhere in the word
- This search strategy is most useful when there are variable spellings for a word and you want to search for all variants at once
- Searching for col?r would return both color and colour
- Isch?emia will retrieve Ischaemia and Ischemia
- Searching for col?r would return both color and colour
For more information see also the Database Search Tips LibGuide.