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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