Truncation

Truncation is a great time-saving tool to use in your searching. If you truncate a term, you are adding a symbol, like an asterisk, to the stem of a word so the computer will find that stem plus anything that comes after it. Look at these two examples.

Notice the variations of word results from using truncation. The symbol used to truncate a word depends upon the library catalog, article database or web search engine you are using, with common symbols being an asterisk (*), a question mark (?) or a dollar sign ($).

Watch the brief video below for a more detailed description of truncation and how to use it in order to search for information in a database more effectively.