WebSonar Search Tips:

The asterisk (*) "SHIFT 8" is a wild card character. Wild cards can be placed at the beginning of a word, the end of a word, or on both sides of a word: rate* (Find all words that start with "rate") *rate (Find all words that end with "rate");

To search for synonyms of a word, simply enclose the word in braces {}:
{car} Looks for car, or any synonyms of car - automobile, vehicle, etc.

You can use and/or/not as qualifiers. Enclose with square brackets to use as a search phrase. [to be or not to be]

The following symbols are reserved by WebSonar.
Do not use these symbols unless you are entering a Boolean search phrase:

& | : # ! = ^ + ~ ( ) / { } [ ]* , @

WebSonar ignores hyphens. A search for Section fifty-one or Section fiftyone will find Section fifty-one, but a search for Section fifty one will not.

To search for a word by how it sounds (Soundex search), simply prefix the word with a slash (/):
/John Smith Looks for any word that sounds like "John" followed by the word "Smith".

To search for documents which have at least 2 of the items listed (Quorum Searching) use the following format:
"2" @ (planes, trains, automobiles, helicopters)

Search Syntax for Boolean and Proximity Searching

The advanced user can perform elaborate searches using a simple, but powerful, search syntax. A search query can contain any combination of phrase, operators, modifiers and parentheses.

Here are some examples:

John & :25 Jim	will find all occurrences of John within 25 words of Jim
Smith ~:15 (John|Jack)	will find all occurrences of Smith not within 15 words of John or Jack
John &= Jim	will find all occurrences of John in the same document as Jim "John must appear before Jim"
Jo*~:1# John	will find all occurrences of any words starting with "Jo" except "John" Always used with Not (~)
"Date:" = "200607*"	will find all documents whose date is any day in July 2006
birth & ("Date:" >= "19470426") & ("Date:" <= "20040101")	will find all documents containing the word "birth" whose date is between April 26, 1947 and January 1, 2004