Keyword Phrase Searching

Phrase searching is a powerful way to retrieve specific information containing commonly used phrases. A phrase search will locate only those records containing two or more words in the particular order in which they appear.

Phrase searching is often used when looking for information about a concept, a person, or a place, as in the examples below.

While these examples show the words in the titles of articles, databases can also search for phrases in other fields, such as author, subject heading, and text.

If you were to search for the words United States without indicating that they are phrase, you could retrieve an unrelated article which contains the two words but not next to each other, such as the following:

The chief executive officer of the United Fruit Company reported better than average growth in the last quarter. He states, "We're doing better than ever."

Databases may differ in how you must enter a phrase search. Here are two examples of searching for phrases:

Place quotations marks to enclose the phrase. For example:

Use a pull down menu. For example:

Always check the or tips page of the system you are using!