Answered By: Shanna Pearson
Last Updated: Aug 22, 2023     Views: 154

Use "AND" when you want to narrow your search.

  • e.g. "organic AND farming" will only pull up results that contain BOTH terms. This will help increase the likelihood that you will find results specific to "organic farming" instead of just farming or organic waste.

Search using AND

 

Use "OR" when you want to broaden your search.

  • e.g. "cats OR dogs" will pull up all results that contain at least one of those terms. You might find results that discuss both cats and dogs in the same piece, but you will also retrieve some results about JUST cats and some results about JUST dogs. 

 

The "OR" modifier is especially useful for including alternate keywords in your searches.

  • e.g. "cats OR felines OR kittens" covers a variety of ways that the concept of cats might be described.

You can combine AND and OR in your search to help broaden your results. Use brackets around words connected by OR. For example:

bullying AND (children OR youth OR kids)

All articles in the above search should include the word bullying and any one of the other three terms.

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