Terms and Connectors Help

Terms and Connectors Search Reference

Connectors are symbols you place between search terms to specify the relationship between them. You can also use the root expander and the universal character to ensure that your search retrieves different forms of your search terms.


Search Connectors
Connector Symbol   Retrieves
AND & Search terms in the same document:
narcotics & warrant
OR (space) Either search term or both:
car automobile
Phrase " " Search terms appearing in the same order as in the quotation marks:
"attractive nuisance"
Grammatical Connectors /s Search terms in the same sentence:
design /s defect
/p Search terms in the same paragraph:
hearsay /p utterance
+s The first term preceding the second within the same sentence:
palsgraf +s island
+p The first term preceding the second within the same paragraph:
ti(mikkelson +p mikkelson)
Note: When you want to specify that the same term appears at least twice in a sentence or paragraph, use the +s or +p connector. For example, the query ti(mikkelson +p mikkelson) retrieves documents in which the name Mikkelson occurs twice in the title field.
Numerical Connectors /n Search terms within "n" terms of each other (where "n" is a number):
person** /3 jurisdiction
+n The first term preceding the second by "n" terms (where "n" is a number):
20 +5 1080
BUT NOT % Documents not containing the term or terms following the % symbol:
laminectomy % to(413)
Use the % connector with caution; it may cause relevant documents to be excluded from your search result.


Root Expander
To retrieve words with variant endings, use the root expander (!). When you place an exclamation point (!) at the end of a root term, you retrieve all possible endings of that root. For example, obey! retrieves obey, obeys, obeyed and obeying.

 

Universal Character
The universal character (*) represents one character. You can place the universal character within or at the end of a term. When you place the universal character within a term, it requires that a character appear in that position. For example, fea*t retrieves feast but not feat.

When you place the universal character at the end of a term, you specify the maximum length of that term. For example, object*** retrieves object, objects, objected, objective, objection and objecting but not objectionable.

 

Turning Off Plurals and Equivalents
Westlaw automatically retrieves plurals when you enter the singular form of a term. You can turn off plurals of a particular term by placing the # symbol in front of the term. To retrieve damage but not damages, type #damage. Placing the # symbol in front of a term also turns off the automatic retrieval of equivalencies. To retrieve perm but not permanent, type #perm.