HAROLD L. DRIMMER LIBRARY

Westchester Community College, Valhalla, New York

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• VIRGIL: Choose a Module
• 1. Keywords
• 2. Book Catalog
• 3. Databases
• 4. Internet
• 5. Citing Works

VIRGIL 3.0: Online Research Tutorial

1.4: Using Truncation for a more efficient search

Did you notice the * symbol in the search terms on the last page? It's called a Truncation symbol.
Using Truncatioin symbols makes your search more efficeient by looking for many forms of a search term at the same time.
Variations, such as censorship, censored, censors. will all be searched using the Truncation censor*

Another Example of truncated terms:

• film* retrieves films, filming, filmography, etc.

Be careful with truncation. 

• Not all words need truncation.
• If you cut some words back too far you can get results for words you hadn't intended.

For Example:

• ad? retrieves advertising, addiction, adversity, adenoids, and Advil!

NEXT: Combining Keywords into a Search Statement