Search

Notes on Searching

A search term may incorporate wildcards: an asterisk (*) matches zero or more non-space characters; a question mark (?) matches exactly one non-space character. If a search term includes any uppercase letters then the search will be case-sensitive. If more than one term is entered, the facility will search for a simple phrase match. Boolean searches are not supported.

The facility uses English-language stemming. A match is therefore generated for every word in the searched texts that has the same lexical root as a word in the search phrase. Stemming does not operate for terms that incorporate wildcards.

A successful search produces a series of results, each consisting of a linked title, some context, and highlighted matches. Clicking a title link loads the corresponding section. If more context is available then a context link is added to this section’s navigation menu, and clicking it will load the wider context.

Examples

Normal

Due to stemming, run matches run, runs, running, and ran; happy matches happy, happier, and happiest.

Case

If the search phrase is lowercase then the search is not case-sensitive. Therefore, hello matches hello and Hello. If the search phrase includes uppercase letters, the search is case-sensitive. Thus, Hello does not match hello.

Wildcard

he* matches he, her, help, hello, etc.; he? matches hem, hen, her, and hew; ch??f matches chief and chaff; island* matches island, islander, islanders, etc.; *est matches honest, holiest, earnest, etc.; *lit* matches little, fidelity, hostilities, etc. A wildcard search can be used to find matches that stemming will miss. For example, wretch* matches wretched but wretch does not; island* will find islanders but island will not.