A "How To" Guide for the WCT Reader

How Do I Conduct an Advanced Search?

What can I do using advanced search?
Check it out. With an ebook already selected, click the Advanced Search button, either on the Home page or at the top or bottom of any results page. You will see a page that starts as in Screen 1:

Advanced search offers multiple (up to ten) search boxes. For each box, you can control:

case = which letters capital, which lower case;

whether the target is headings, text, or both;

whether you want any of the words, all of the words, or an exact phrase; and

whether the content of the next search box must be included, excluded, or included if possible.

Through the Preferences page, you can also control the number of search boxes shown on the Advanced Search page.
How do I control case? What does that do for me?
A simple search on Brit* fetches words you may not want, as in Screen 2:

Chances are "brittle" and "brittleness" are not what you had in mind. Instead, enter Brit* in the first search box on the Advanced Search page, then check the first Match Case box, as in Screen 3:

In Screen 4, the new result page has 10 fewer hits (those with brittle or brittleness removed). In other words, the advanced search is more focused than the simple search.

Try the same method on two terms together. Click on Advanced Search. Input German* Brit* and check the first "Match Case" box. The result is Screen 5:

Case is as specified for every term in an Advanced search box.
How do I choose this word OR that word OR another word, etc.?
Set the Any Words radio button. Suppose you want something about education, but you are not sure which words might be used to get across the idea. Try this example. In the first advanced search box, input school* educat* teach* and click on Any Words below the first search box. Leave "Match Case" blank. The result is in Screen 6:

Notice two things about the result:

There are lots of hits. OR logic expands the count. The 528 include all the records with a variation of school, all those with variations of educate, all those with variations of teach. Lots of records have one OR the other OR the third, etc. Do the same search over again with All Words checked, and there are only 6 hits.

All the words are treated in an "Any Words" search as having the roughly the same meaning. Therefore they are assigned the same color. This proves very helpful in more complex searches.

Let's return to an earlier search for a theme. The simple search German* Brit* (not controlled for case) yielded 20 hits in Screen 7 of the How do I Add Power page. But that misses all the records in which some variation of English might substitute for British. So try this advanced search: Search box 1 -- German*. Check Match Case under box 1. When there is only one search term, it doesn't matter whether "All Words" or "Any Words" is checked. Search box 2 -- Brit* Engl*. Check Match Case under box 2. Check Any Words under box 2. The specification looks like Screen 7:

Click Search. The result is in Screen 8:

The number of hits has shot up from 22 to 134. The OR (Any Words) logic pulls in many more records that have roughly the same meaning. That's powerful.
How do I focus a search result more precisely?
The Include if possible option appears between each pair of search boxes. It means just that -- If the words in the next search box are present, highlight them and count them in the frequency score. The number of records found is not changed, but the relevance ranking may be changed where there is a tie in meaning score. The "include if possible" words may raise the score of some records enough to push them higher in the list.

Screen 9 is the result of an Advanced search on "Any Words" ... German* Brit* Engl* with "Match Case" turned on:

Click on the Advanced button. That returns you to the Advanced Search page. Note that the search on "Any Words" ... German* Brit* Engl* with "Match Case" is still in place. Now add to the search specification in the second search box: war declar* annex*. Click on Any Words below. In the blue Down Arrow before the second box choose Include if Possible. Screen 10 is what you see before you click on the Search button:

Notice a button that has not shown up till now: Clear Previous Search. We did not use it yet. But it is a handy way to clear all the text boxes and return everything to default settings: "Headings and Text", "All Words", "Match Case" off, and "Must Include".

With the specification as in Screen 10, if you click on Search, Screen 11 is the result:

More words are colored. A different hit -- the former hit # 5 -- now heads the list, because its frequency score has increased. (Remember that frequency scores are used to rank hits that share the same meaning score.) So relevance ranking is definitely influenced, and desired Include if Possible words help some hits to rise toward the top.
How do I get rid of hits that aren't related to what I am after?
It is common in English for a single word to have several meanings. Sometimes those meanings are strikingly different. Example: What is a bat? In baseball or cricket, it is a club used to hit a ball. In pottery, it is either a removable circle of wood on top of a wheel, or a ceramic piece inside a kiln. In construction, it is a slab of insulation or segment of hardened brick. A bat is also a flying mammal that catches mosquitoes using a biological version of radar.

What if you are searching for a term that has multiple meanings, and hits with the wrong meaning clutter the results? That's the purpose of the Exclude option in the downward arrow between the search boxes in Advanced Search. Selecting Exclude means that hits are to be eliminated if they contain words found in the next search box.
What do the headings only / text only options do for me?
If you click the Text Only option, all the heading-dependent hits (those that are found only because one or more of the needed terms are in headings) disappear from the result list. Since those are always at the end of the list, basically Text Only shortens the list.

If you click the Headings Only option, you will get only the hits that are caught fully by headings.
How do I change the number of search boxes in an advanced search?
If you want really serious power in specifying searches, you can raise the number of search boxes anywhere up to ten. Click on Home, then Preferences, and scroll down to this setting (Screen 12):

Remember to Save Preferences to leave this page.

Meaningful precision search for text data is available now. Learn more.

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