Searching Dialog: Proximity Operators: w, n, s, l

Scope

• In every language, every dialect, every social subgroup, every profession, there are common:
  • Ways of constructing sentences.
    • For example, common sentence constructions in English include:
      • noun-verb
      • article-noun-verb-adverb
      • noun-verb-adjective-direct object
  • Words and phrases and abbreviations
    • Those common to a culture, community, or social group
      • bloody (Anglicism)
      • know what I mean (hip-hop, rap)
      • heavy heart
      • geek
    • Those common to a job, profession, or avocation.
      • diabetes mellitus (medicine)
      • charm (a characteristic of the sub-atomic particles called "quarks")
      • home run (baseball)
      • SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism)
      • geek
• For any subject, there is a probability that certain words or phrases will occur within :
  • Close proximity to each other
    • Example:
      • If you are looking for articles on the breeding of horses, you might find:
        • Kentucky has numerous horse breeding facilities.
        • Kentucky has numerous facilities for the breeding of Arabian horses.
  • Within the same sentence, paragraph, or page
    • Example:
      • An article on Macintoshes will probably have words like "Mac" and "performance" in the same paragraph as "G3" (the microprocessor) and "processor" and "233MHz" (the clock speed of one G3 microprocessor.
      • In an article on research on the thermal analysis of houses for leaks may have the words "heat," "wall," "windows," in close proximity to each other.

Consequently:

• To search effectively, you need to:
  • Have a general idea the way language is used:
    • In any social group.
    • In different professions.
    • In different fields or avocations
    • In various types of publications, including;
      • General magazines and newspapers
      • Professional journals
      • Subject-specific magazines
      • Academic journals
  • Know or find the words (and synonyms) appropriate to the subject your are searching for.
  • Know the available proximity operators for a database and how to use them.

Proximity operators

• Proximity operators are letters and/or symbols that enable the searcher to specify how close to each other she/he expects selected terms to occur.

List of operators

Function/Command	Format	Examples, Notes
adjacent in order entered	(w)	computer(w)systems Finds phrases such as "computer systems.
near in order entered	(#w)	computer(6w)systems # can be any suitable number
adjacent in either order	(n)	search(n)example Finds "search example" and "example search"
near in either order	(#n)	dog(9n)cat Finds "cat .... dog" and "dog .... cat"
within same field	(s)	teacher(s)student Both terms must be in the same field in either order
within same descriptor pair (heading-subheading)	(l)	solar(l)energy i.e., heading(l)subheading

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