Truncation and wild cards
In one of our
residential classes we had the discussion on the use of truncation and wild
cards as tools for effective searching. A very useful technique for expanding
our search results is to search by the root word. If we get very few results,
we can use truncation to widen our
search to get more results. In truncation the end word is cut off and replaced
with asterisk symbol. This is useful in finding alternative word endings based
on the root of a word. For instance, if we enter ‘bake *’ we might get results
for baked, bakes, bakery, and baker. This will not only save our time but also
help in obtaining good results by doing just one search instead of many
searches.
Critical analysis/Future commitment
I am still
confused whether truncation and wild cards are same or not. I understood
truncation very well but bit confused with wild cards if they are different.
This is because some sources say that substituting a character as a stand in
for any word or letter in a search phrase is called wild cards. It is said that it is useful if a word is spelled in
different ways but still has the same meaning. The examples could be like man
and men, color and colour. However, some explained that wild cards also focus on
the root word like truncation.
The use of truncation is
indeed going to help us search effectively. It is going to really save our time
and the resources by obtaining more search results. My future commitment here
would be to clarify on the two terms by asking the known and exploring examples.
Till now, I take truncation and wild cards as same and they take the same
process for the search. And in the process of reading this I hope our tutor and
friends would clarify on this.
