Library:Library Research Skills For Biologists/Module 4/Module 4B SearchingForArticles/Page 09

In addition to searching synonyms and related words for your term (e.g. light, circadian, diurnal), you may want to search variations of a word (e.g. photoperiod, photoreceptor, phototaxis). One way to do this search is to use OR: photoperiod OR photoreceptor OR phototaxis

Another way is truncation. Type the stem of the word followed by the truncation symbol. e.g.: photo* to find variant endings of your word. Many indexes such as Zoological Record use the asterisk (*)as the truncation symbol. (More about truncation)

TIP: Don't truncate too early. If you searched pho*, you would find phone, phobia, phony, and phosphate, among other words!