ENG 390 - Graphic Literature

When you are assigned an essay with suggested research questions, or if you have created your own, first highlight the main keywords that get to the essence of what you want to know.

• Highlight main keywords from your research question.
• These are often the nouns within your question/sentence.

Not every researcher is going to use the same terms that you have selected when writing their journal articles. It is important to have other synonyms/related words when searching.

Often a thesaurus is helpful in gathering more keyword synonyms.

• Thesaurus.com

 Use boolean operators to combine your keywords.

• Combine similar terms/synonyms with OR
• Combine different terms with AND

Using these operators will greatly improve how many relevant results you get when you search. 

Need more clarification? Watch our Boolean Searching Video.

Put quotations marks around phrases:

• ie. "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"

Put an asterisk (*) at the root of a word to search all possible endings:

• eg Searching: Sprout* = Sprout, Sprouting, Sprouted, Sproutly