Expert Archives - Adjacency & Proximity

Use proximity operators in place of AND to specify how close together words must appear in articles.

NEAR

NEAR is used to specify the number of words separating terms. Terms can be in any order.

near (deficit, spending, n=2) - retrieves both phrases: deficit spending, spending deficit.

To broaden adjacency searching, specify a higher number (n=x)

near (deficit, spending, n=5) looks for both terms within 1-5 words of each other.

ONEAR

ONEAR is used to specify the number of words separating terms. Terms must occur within a given number of words of each other, in the exact order specified

onear (pierre, trudeau, n=3) - will retrieve all variations of this name including Pierre Trudeau, Pierre E. Trudeau, and Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

For a complete guide to Expert Searching, please see our Expert Search Guide (PDF). Related Topics:

General Guidelines

Boolean (AND, OR, ANDNOT)

Truncation and Wildcards

Field Searching

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