Assumed Between Search Words:
AND |
By default, the search engine assumes you want each of the words to appear somewhere in the resulting documents.
Example: retiree health benefits
is the same as if you had typed
retiree AND health AND benefits
But you can search for documents that have any of the words, by typing OR between the words.
Example: retiree OR post-retirement OR postretirement
And, if you use parentheses, you can use both AND and OR to obtain even more specific results.
Example: (retiree OR post-retirement or postretirement) AND health AND benefits
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Eliminating Off-Topic Results:
NOT |
If your search produces some good documents but also produces documents about a subject you're not interested in, you can eliminate the unwanted documents by specifying one or more words that are NOT to appear in the results.
Example: You're interested in the anti-cutback rules that apply to qualified retirement plans, not the cutback rules that apply under Medicare or Medicaid. You could use this query:
(cutback OR cut-back OR anticutback OR anti-cutback) NOT Medicare NOT Medicaid
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Searching for a Phrase:
Quotation Marks |
If you wish to retrieve documents that contain a specific phrase, enclose the phrase in quotation marks.
Example: "Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation" OR PBGC
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Shortcuts:
+ and - |
The - character immediately in front of a word (e.g. -someword) is the equivalent of the NOT modifier described above.
The + character immediately in front of a word (for example, +someword) is the equivalent of the AND modifier described above.
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| The Wild Card Character: * |
You can use the * character to represent zero, one or more numbers or letters. (But this works only if the resulting word is at least 4 characters long.)
Example: retire* will search for retire, retired, retiree, retirees, retires, retiring, retirement, etc.
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