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Biology

A general guide to resources in the field of biology

Wildcards

Why use it?

Wildcards help find words with multiple spellings.  This can be especially useful with words that have American or British spellings or singular vs plural.

Examples:
tires or tyres
labor or labour
woman or women

How it works:

Insert the wildcard symbol within the word where the difference in spelling exists and the database will retrieve the alternate spellings.

Example:

t*res
The * will find tires or tyres.

Wildcard symbols can vary, but the most common one is the asterisk * (Shift + 8) on your keyboard.
Variations: *, ?, $, !, #

Refer to the help guide of the search tool you are using to determine which wildcard symbol to use.

Creative Commons License
This work by The University of Victoria Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License unless otherwise indicated when material has been used from other sources.