Phrase+Searching+Block+G

=Phrase Searching = //By Mahek, Aless, Alisa, Alyssa and Tani//

**Welcome to the Phrase Searching Page! This is where you'll learn more about the search technique called Phrase Searching.**
Think you know everything there is to know about phrase searching already? Take this quiz to see! media type="custom" key="6998721"

What is Phrase Searching?
According to a webpage on the University of Cape Town's Information Literacy site, phrase searching is when you use a combination of words in a specific order so that your search results are more accurate. Individually, all words have a meaning. However, when words are combined, the meaning is more precise in terms of what you are looking for. Depending on which search engine or database you are using, you must use either brackets (insert phrase here) or quotation marks "insert phrase here" in order to show that the words you are looking for is a phrase. (Phrase Searching).

How does one use Phrase Searching?
When you use the phrase searching, you must enter the phrase with quotation marks at the both sides of the phrase. The result will appear to have the exact phrase. For example: "chocolate chip cookies". The result will appear to be exactly the same phrase. If you didn't include the quotation on both sides, the search engine will find pages that have the words "chocolate", "chip", and/or "cookies" (Lilly).

How does Phrase Searching Make the Searching Process Easier?
Phrase searching is a good way to eliminate some of the search results that you don't need as it narrows down your search and makes it more specific (OSLIS). For instance, if you wanted to find information about "Stephen King", by using phrase search, you would be able to eliminate all results pertaining to any other Stephen or any other King as the search engine would only offer results that have the words "Stephen" and "King" right next to each other (OSLIS).

__EBSCO __
<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">There are two ways to phrase search on EBSCO, either using double quotation marks before and after a phrase (example: “Chocolate chip”) or putting w0 in between words (example: Chocolate w0 chip), the latter specifies that there should 0 words in between chocolate and chip (Bare Bones of Searching EBSCO Databases).

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">When you go on to EBSCO help you can see that when your search includes phrases, the default search order is that phrases are searched in the order in which they are typed in and with the words right next to each other. Usually, the exact phrase is searched. However this is not true when phrases contain stop words and Booleans– for example and, or, not, been, however, so, the, for, or, of and after, these words will always be ignored and any single word will be searched in its place. For example, if you were to search “Company of America” the search results would come up as “Company of America”, “Company in America” and “Company for America”. The same goes for punctuation, phrases with punctuation and symbols will also allow the search engine to look for phrases with or without the punctuation and symbols. So when you type “Television: talk-show” the results can come out as both “Television talk show” and “Television talk-show”. But when phrases include question marks, the question mark will be removed in phrase searches to ensure that results are returned, as question marks are treated as a wildcard (EBSCO).

__United Streaming__


<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">In United Streaming, phrase searching works similarly to Google. However, you must use the quotation marks (“ “) whenever you want the results to contain the exact phrase (“Advanced Search.”). For example: “vanilla ice cream”. The results will be exactly that phrase in that order. However, if you wrote vanilla ice cream with only one quotation mark (“vanilla ice cream), the results will be “vanilla”, “ice” and/or “cream”.

__<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">Google __
<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">According to Google Search Help, using quotations marks when searching causes for Google to look for results that have those specific words in only that sequence and with no differences. It is pointless to put the quotation marks since putting the words together and the placement of the words gives Google an indication to only find results with those words. In fact putting quotation marks would be a disadvantage for you since you may lose useful results. An example would be if you want information about George Bush and you type in “George Bush” then the results will not include pages with George W. Bush so you might lose valuable information (Google). So in order to be more efficient in searching, the best option is to type in the words in the order you want without quotation marks.

__<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">World Book __
<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;"> In World Book Online when you put words in the search bar and click search, the search engine automatically puts the phrase into quotation marks. This causes for the results to contain the exact words that are searched for. For example if you type in “Albert Einstein” into the search bar, the results that will show will be ones that have the exact words “Albert Einstein” and in that order.

__<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">JSTOR __
<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Phrase searching in JSTOR is similar to phrase searching in Google – it is done by putting double quotation marks (“ “) around the phrase that you want to search (University of Arizona). For instance, by searching for “United Nations Development Program” with the quotes around it, you will get results for that exact phrase. However, without the quotes, you can get results containing any of the four words. However, if you want to enclose the search terms without necessarily searching for an exact phrase, you can do that with round parentheses (University of Arizona). This is useful when you are unsure of the exact phrase as it provides a little more flexibility. For instance, by searching for (development “United Nations”), you will find both the word ‘development’ and the phrase “United Nations” in the item title field.

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">What are the Disadvantages of Phrase Searching?
<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">According to Gupta’s article, the disadvantage of phrase searching is that they will find results with completely exact phrase that we type. Though this may seem like an advantage you have to consider that there are many words in English or any other languages that are synonyms, thus, there aren’t a lot of results that have exactly the same phrase. Though phrase searching gives you fewer results with greater relevance, by narrowing the proximity of your searches it is possible that you would miss out on similarly relevant information (Gupta). Some data bases as well don’t support phrase searching while others don’t use double quotation marks but inverted commas or other brackets (University of Fort Hare). In these cases it might be useful to look at the “Help” function of each database to see what you should use for that particular site (University of Fort Hare).

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">So, What Did You Learn?
How much do you know about Phrase Searching? Quiz yourself to find out!

<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">Images:
<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">Ipswich, MA. "EBSCO Publishing Releases EBSCO Discovery Service." __PRWeb__. 5 Jan. 2010. 21 Sept. 2010. <[|http://www.prweb.com/releases/EBSCO/DiscoveryService/prweb3407034.htm]>. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Library News." __RIT Libraries__. 20 Sept. 2010. <[]>. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sanchez, Julian. "Surveillance, Security, and the Google Breach." __Cato @ Liberty__. 13 Jan. 2010. 21 Sept. 2010. <[]>. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">Scott, John. "What Is Discovery Education Streaming?" __Montgomery County Public Schools__. 29 Jan. 2008. 21 Sept. 2010. <[]>. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Alberta Library. "Netspeed 2009." __The Alberta Library__. 2008. 21 Sept. 2010. <[]>.