The below chart offers detailed search syntax for five important aggregator born-fulltext new sources:
It also offers detailed search syntax for one digitized and OCR'd fulltext newspaper source:
| Dow Jones Factiva | Nexis Uni | Newsbank Access World News | ProQuest Historical Newspapers / Ethnic NewsWatch / Alt-Press Watch | |
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Default is natural language, system finds phrase, then implied AND, and then implied OR. The search will recognize any of the below Boolean and proximity operators. See Boolean Searching Nexis Uni has no retrieval limit. |
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| To Find: | ||||
| all of these | pen AND pencil | pen AND pencil (AND is default if two terms entered without a connector). | AND (pull down menu) |
pen AND pencil AND (pull down menu) |
| any of these | pen OR pencil | pen OR pencil | OR (pull down menu) |
pen OR pencil OR (pull down menu) |
| phrase | north star (phrase assumed) | north star (phrase assumed) | "north star" | "north star" |
| phrase with "and" in it | bread W/1 butter | "bread and butter" | "bread and butter" | |
| excluding words | pen not pencil | pen AND NOT pencil (should be used at the end of a search statement) | NOT (pull down menu) |
pen not pencil NOT (pull down menu) |
| stopwords | no stopwords, phrase that include and, or, not, near, same, date must be in quotes | yes stop words, put phrase containing stopwords in "" | no stopwords, system will substitute adj for some words, use "" for phase with the or a | no stopwords, phrase that include and, or, not, near, same, date must be in quotes |
| Proximity: | ||||
| within x words of each other and in any order |
reality/N3/television A value for N is required with /Nn/ |
reality W/3 television (When W/n connectors have the same number, they operate from left to right. If they have different numbers, the smaller number operates first. The highest value of n is 255) |
NEARX reality NEAR3 television |
reality NEAR/3 television reality N/3 television NEAR/N or N/n NEAR (with no /n) defaults to NEAR/4 |
| within x words of each other and in the same order | micheal W/n fox Note: W/1 is assumed if a number is omitted. n is any number from 1 to 10 michael ADJn fox Note: ADJ1 is assumed if a number is omitted. Use 1-10 |
PRE/n michael PRE/3 fox |
ADJx elon ADJ2 musk |
PRE/n P/n university PRE/2 pennsylvania |
| same paragraph, any order | hershey same cadbury | hershey W/p cadbury | ||
| same sentence, any order | culture W/s learning | |||
| same segment | W/seg | |||
| Truncation: | ||||
| unlimited characters at end of word | environment* Note: At least 3 characters must be typed before using the * sign, and the * sign must be entered at the end of a word only. No number is allowed following the * |
environment! (do not use in "natural language" searches) |
environment* |
environment* * searches for up to 500 word variations. |
| specific number of characters at end of word | industr$3 Note: At least 3 characters must be typed before using the $ sign, and the $ sign must be entered at the end of a word only. $5 is assumed if a number is omitted. Number can be 1-9 |
industr*** (do not use in "natural language" searches) |
environment[*2] environment?? [*n] replaces up to n trailing characters (maximum 20). Multiple ? replaces up to the specified number of characters |
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| one internal letter | globali?tion gets globalization and globalisation |
globali*tion gets globalization and globalisation (do not use in "natural language" searches) |
globali?tion g??se gets goose and geese |
globali?ation gets globalization and globalisation |
| multiple internal letters | bernst**n, use one * for each character replaced | av*e gets avenue and average, * works for up to 5 characters |
av*e av????e av[*4]e These all get avenue and average. Internal * replaces up to 5 characters |
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| Frequency: | atleastn sanders n is any number between 1 and 50 |
atleast10(sanders) atl10(sanders) |
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| Words in a specific location or field: |
/fn/ global warming/f50/ Retrieves documents where search terms must appear within the first (n) words of the document text. N may be 1-500, inclusive. |
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| headline | hd=earthquake | headline(budget) | Headline (in menu) | TI (Document title) |
| headline group (Section, Column and Headline) | hl=budget | |||
| lead paragraph(s) | lp=budget | lead(budget) | Lead/First paragraph (in menu) | |
| headline/lead paragraph(s) | hlp=budget | hlead(budget) budget/f50/ |
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| author/byline |
by=hendrickson Author of articles as provided by the publisher. au=hendrickson Author of the article as provided by Factiva. |
author(hendrickson) | Author/Byline(in menu) | |
| publication/source name | sn=new york times | publication(new york times) | Source (in menu) | |
| Geographical location from which story originates | sn=new york times | dateline(paris) | ||
| Length of article (in words): | ||||
| less than | wc<500 | length<500 | word count (pull down menu) | |
| greater than | wc>500 | length>500 | word count (pull down menu) | |
| equal to | wc=500 | |||
| less than or equal to | wc<=500 | |||
| greater than or equal to | wc>=500 | |||
| Singular / Plural: | ||||
| singular | enter singular form | singular(teenager) Note: normally the singular, plural, and possessive of a word are searched automatically |
automatic singular/plural | |
| plural | enter plural form | plural(jobs) Note: normally the singular, plural, and possessive of a word are searched automatically |
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| Capitals: | ||||
| all capital letters | caps(aids) | |||
| no capital letters | nocaps(turkey) | |||
| Dates: | Use date range pull down menu |
LexisNexis Academic: Specify date under Advanced Options or add to search in one of the below formats. <br><br> Note: BEF(before), AFT (after), EQU (on that day), GEQ (before including), LEQ (after including)<br><br> date=1/1/2016 date GEQ 1/1/2016 AND date LEQ 3/31/2016 date(>= 1/1/2016) AND date(<= 3/31/2016) date AFT 1/1/2016 AND date BEF 4/1/2016 date >= 1/1/2016 AND date <= 4/1/2016 date(=1/2016) OR date(=2/2016) OR date(=3/2016)) Nexis Uni - has a date slider option or calendar option. |
Choose Date in pull down field menu and see supplied and custom options and format.
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Use date range filters. |