Truncation | Library Tutorial Module 4

Truncation is like a wildcard. Added to the stem of a word, it will find that stem plus anything that comes after it. The symbol used to truncate a word depends upon the index, database, or Web search engine you are using.

psychol*	will return records on psychology, psychological, psychologist. * is a common truncation symbol used to stand for any number of characters.
wom?n	will return records on women, woman. ? is a common truncation symbol used for internal truncation to stand for exactly one character or an exact number of charactersas shown in the example below.
psych????y	will return records on psychology, psychiatry, but not psychoanalysis.