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Truncation and wildcards provide a way to search for all forms of a word.
A truncation symbol before a prefix or root word says, "let the word begin this way, I don't care how it ends." Do be wary of unintended words which may be pulled that way. It is often used to include singular and plural forms of the word. In English language searching the wildcard can pull both British and English spellings of a word
Example: Labo?r will return both: Labor or Labour.
Remember:
The truncation/wildcard symbol is always dependent on the Search Platform. Always check the Help screen inside a database.
Examples of Truncation/Wildcards in the EBSCO Search Platform:
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Stop Words are small words e.g. articles, prepositions, pronouns) which the database ignores in a search request generally, or in a particular field. in the database record. When searching for adjacent word - a word within so many words of another word - the database will skip the stop words in the count.
Every search platform has its list and rules about Stop Words, e.g. in Thompson Reuter's Web of Science a a stop word IS recognized as a word in the Publication Name field.
EXAMPLE of STOP WORDS from PROQUEST
