All databases on this sheet have extensive help sections with examples and even more tools then mentioned here such as field searching. Use this table as a quick reminder of the symbols available.
 

Database or Supplier	Truncation to replace letters following a word root	Wildcard to replace a letter or letters in a word	Operators & Proximity Searching	Phrase Searching
ProQuest	*  operat* finds operations, operational, and operator	?  wom?n finds woman, women, and womyn educat?? finds educated and educator	AND OR AND NOT W/N (WITHIN) NOT W/N (NOT WITHIN) PRE/N (PRECEDE BY) W/DOC (WITHIN DOC)	two-word phrase (default) When you want ProQuest to find occurrences of a phrase longer than two words, enclose the phrase in quotation marks.
LexisNexis	! operat! finds operations, operational, and operator	* replaces a letter or letters in a word. You can use more than one * in a word, and you can use it anywhere except as the first letter.	AND  OR  AND NOT W/n (ex. use w/3 to join first and last names to include initials etc.) W/S (within sentence) W/P (within paragraph) PRE/n	Adjacent words are automatically searched as a phrase. Remove reserve words (AND, OR) and noise words (of, the). See database help for complete list. To avoid phrase searching insert operators between words.
FirstSearch (many databases)	+ at the end of a word for simple plural forms (s or es) of the word. Does not search for other plural forms such as ies for words that end in y. * can only be used after the 3rd character.	A pound sign # represents a single character.  ?  alone or with a number, represents from zero to nine additional characters. wom#n retrieves woman and women  colo?r retrieves color, colour, colonizer, and colorimeter  colo?1r retrieves color, colour, but not colonizer, colorimeter	AND OR NOT W (with), Wx in the order typed N (near), Nx in any order	W (with) both words, in the order typed, with no other words between them. nursing w research nursing w3 research
America: History & Life Historical Abstracts	* insert for an indeterminate number of unknown letters	? insert for each unknown letter.	AND (default OR AND NOT	Phrase -enclose in quotation marks
Cambridge Scientific Abstracts Biological & Medical Sciences ERIC Social Services Abstracts Sociological Abstracts	* include all forms of a root word	* Multi-character wildcard, eg: h*ophilia retrieves haemophilia as well as hemophilia. ? Single-character wildcard. The ? represents a single character; two ?? represent and so on.	AND OR NOT WITHIN "X"  (any order)	Phrase - adjacent words, no quotes needed To avoid phrase searching insert operators between words.
EBSCO Academic Search Elite Business Source Elite Sport Discus	* cat* retrieves catatonic, catatonia, category, etc	? for each unknown character ne?t retrieves neat, nest, next.	AND OR NOT N (near) Nx The search terms must occur within x terms of one another, in the order entered.	Phrase - enclose in quotation marks. However, if the phrase contains a stop word (the, of, or, after), the stop word is ignored. "sink or swim" finds results with either "sink" or "swim."

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