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This is a summary of the Boolean conditions you can use to refine your Search.


INCLUDE Condition
maths and arrangements
maths + arrangements

N.B. maths arrangements

and/AND/+/default
pages with both words maths and arrangements
pages with both words maths and arrangements

pages with words maths and arrangements


OR Condition
maths or arrangements

or/OR
pages with words maths or arrangements or both

EXCLUDE Condition
maths not arrangements
maths - arrangements

not/NOT/-
pages with word maths and without arrangements
pages with word maths and without arrangements


N.B.You cannot start an expression with a NOT condition

  not maths
  not maths and arrangements

N.B. Each condition should be on its own and not followed by another one. If it is, only the last one is considered e.g:

  maths and not arrangements

is processed as

  maths not arrangements

Phrases

Double Quotes

If you wish to find the phrase 'maths arrangements' rather than the individual words maths or arrangements then use double quotes, e.g:

  "maths arrangements"

will return all pages where the words 'maths arrangements' appear together with a space in between (multiple spaces in between the words are ignored).

Note that hyphenated words need to be put in quotes so that the search knows you are not using an exclude condition as shown above. e.g:

  "Pass-IT"
  "anti-social"
  "anti-inflammatory"


Complex Condition

Parentheses

Some conditions can be ambiguous in meaning. e.g

  maths and arrangements or english and specimen question papers

You can make it clear what is being asked for by using parentheses. i.e

  (maths and arrangements) or (english and specimen question papers)

means pages with both words maths and arrangements, or, both words english and specimen question papers

Another example of complex search conditions would be:

  maths and (arrangements or english) and specimen question papers

means pages with words maths and specimen question papers, and also either arrangements or english.


Wild Card

Asterisk

If you look for the word super then you will not find the words superb or supersonic.

If you use the wild card character asterisk then you can. i.e.

  super*

will return pages with words super, superb, supersonic etc.


Proximity

near/NEAR

This will find all pages where two or more words are ‘near’ each other.
The pages will be prioritised according to how near the words are to each other up to a limit of words that separate them (approximately forty words). e.g.

  maths near arrangements

will return pages with the words maths and arrangements within about forty words to each other and prioritised so that the pages where the words are closest together are prioritised in the search results page. e.g.

  maths near arrangements near speciment question papers

will find pages where cat is near dog and dog is near parrot.


Upper and Lower Case

The search will find words that match regardless of capital letters or otherwise. e.g.

  maths

will find MATHS or maths or Maths or MaTHS.

Combining Words and Phrases with Operators

You can search any combination of words and phrases. e.g.

  (maths and arrangements not "syllabus") or ("professional development" not work*)

finds pages with words maths and arrangements but not syllabus, or pages with words professional development as a phrase separated by a space but not including words work, workshop, working etc

Search Results

You can always see what has been searched for.

Unsearchable Characters

Some characters may cause confusion for the Search.

For example, if you look for A&E and see

This shows that & has caused the E to be ignored and the A is then ignored as usual.

If we had looked for Accident&Emergency we may have seen.

We can see that the search discarded the Emergency and just searched for Accident.