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Characters:
All diacritics, and distinctions of upper and lower case, are ignored in the search engine; for punctuation see below.
The Search Engine requires "straight quotes" not “smart quotes”.
Spelling:
In French, German and Spanish words may be searched for in either old or modern spelling. The text as keyed has been coded to record modern spelling alongside original spelling. As a general rule the most effective way to search French, German or Spanish text will be to use modern spelling.
Latin has been keyed in the original spelling, with a modest degree of coding for possible variant spellings: e.g. relligione / religione; coelum / caelum.
Words
There is no lemmatisation.
- By default a search will match any characters entered, and any following within the same word:
E.g. port will find port, portal, porter but not import, apporter, etc. - To match characters before the word enter an asterisk:
E.g. *port will find import, apporter as well as port, portal, porter, etc. - To find an exact match use quotes (as with popular internet search engines)
E.g. "port" will only find port and no other variations.
Phrases
- To match an exact phrase use quotation marks:
E.g. "musa latina" will only find emblems that have those two words next to each other. - If two or more words are entered without quotes this will work as a Boolean 'and' search (as with popular internet search engines):
E.g. musa latina will find emblems that have the character-strings musa and latina anywhere in their text. - Entering multiple words will match any of each word's characters and any following within the same word :
E.g. musa would return musaigne if the emblem also included the word latina. Similarly latina would also return latinarum if musa were also present in the emblem. - Any of the options mentioned in the Words section above are available when multiple words are entered. Thus "musa" "latina" will return exact matches of the two words.
- It is possible to search for multiple exact phrases or a phrase and other words:
E.g. "musa latina" harmon will return emblems featuring the exact phrase musa latina and one or more words starting with harmon (such as harmonia or harmoniae or harmonie).
Boolean
- As mentioned above, Boolean AND will automatically be used if two or more words or phrases are entered.
The word and may be entered if desired:
E.g. "musa" and "latina" will bring back only those emblems featuring the exact words musa and latina, as will a search for "musa" "latina". - Two or more words or phrases can be combined using Boolean OR. OR broadens a search while AND
limits a search:
E.g. "musa" OR "latina" will bring back any emblems that feature the exact words musa and latina plus any other emblems that feature one exact word or the other.
Punctuation and Apostrophes
- Punctuation is discounted for searching purposes
E.g. "apud poetas Minervam" will return apud poëtas, Minervam. - Apostrophes are counted as spaces for searching purposes
E.g. l'amour is searched as l amour. - Similarly a search for "amour" will return "amour" on its own, as well as "amour", as transcribed in "l'amour" or "d'amour".
