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Search tips
- Differences in American English and Australian English spelling
- If a word is sometimes hyphenated, search using the hyphen and find both terms
- Truncation finds all words with different endings eg. use pregnan* to find pregnant, pregnancy, pregnancies
- Wildcard symbols find words spelt in different ways eg. organi?ation will find organisation and organization (Wildcard symbol can vary between databases)
- Double quotation marks keep words together as a phrase eg. "postnatal care"
- Limits will refine your search results: language, human, gender, age, date or type of publication
- Check the database Help or Tips to find advice on which symbol to use for truncation or wildcard, and other helpful tips
- Health DatabasesGo to the health databases expert guide for more information on effective searching