HENRY figure Just Ask Henry!

Tips on Refining Your Searches with Henry

Usually you can just enter a few words that best describe that which you are trying to locate.

To perform more complicated searches, Henry can understand any combination of logic operators, special pattern matchers, concept expansion, or proximity operations.

Henry's Favorite SIMPLE Techniques:

  • place a plus sign in front of a word that MUST appear in the results

  • place a minus sign in front of a word that MUST NOT appear in the results.

  • place quotation marks around a phrase to search for that exact phrase.

    Keywords Phrases and Wild-cards:
    To locate words, just type them in as you would in a word processor. Upper vs. lower case will be ignored.

    The wild-card character * (asterisk) may be used to match just the prefix of a word or to ignore the middle of something.

    If the item you wish to locate is more complicated than the simple * wild-card can accomplish, try using a "regular expression" matcher, described below.

    To locate a number of adjacent words in a specific order, surround them with " (double quotation) characters.

    Examples: 

    Query                  Locates
----------------------------------------------------------
john                   john, John
"john public"          John Public
John*Public            John Q. Public, John Public
456*a*def              1-23456-789-ABCDEF
activate               activate, activation, activated...

    The default behavior of the search is to locate an intersection (or 'AND') of every element within a query. This means that the query; "property tax reform" is the equivalent to the boolean query: "property AND tax AND reform" 

           
Example               Finds 
----------------------------------------------------------------- 
bob sam joe           Bob with Sam and Joe  (within the selected proximity)
bob sam -joe          Bob with Sam without Joe
bob sam joe @1        Bob with Sam, or, Bob with Joe, or, Joe with Sam
A B C D @1            AB or AC or AD or BC or BD or CD       
+A B C D @1           ABC or ABD or ACD 
A B C -D @1           ( AB or AC or BC ) without D

    Natural Language Query:
    You may enter a query in the form of a sentence or question. Henry will automatically identify the important words and phrases within your query and remove the "noise words".

    Example:
    What is the state of the art in geonomic reforms?

    The software will search for:
    state of the art AND geonomic AND reforms

    Using the Special Pattern Matchers
    These pattern matchers are used to locate hard-to-find items within text:

    If improperly used these pattern matchers can slow queries. Therefore they require other keyword(s) in the query, and are disabled entirely under Page (default) proximity. 

          
Example       Matcher        Finds
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ronald %regan        Approximate    Ronald Raygun, Ronald Re~an, Ronald 8eagan
%75MYPARTNO9045d/6a  Approximate    Anything within 75% of looking like MYPARTNO9045d/6a   
/19[789][0-9]        Reg. Expr.     1970-1999
/[1-9]{3}\-=[0-9]{4} Reg. Expr.     Phone numbers like 555-1212, 631-8544
#87                  Numeric        four score and seven, 87 
#>0<1                Numeric        Fractions like 9/16, 55%, 0.123, 15 nanoseconds

    Using word forms

    The Word forms options give you control over how many variations of your query terms will be sought in your search. 
    EXAMPLES:

 president 
    EXACT : president
    PLURAL: (above) + presidents president's
    ANY   : (above) + presidential presidency preside presides presiding presided

 tight 
    EXACT : tight
    PLURAL: (above) + tights
    ANY   : (above) + tightly tightening tightened tighter tightest

 program 
    EXACT : programs 
    PLURAL: (above) + programs program's
    ANY   : (above) + programming programmatic programmed programmer programmable

    Controlling proximity:
    Mastering the usage of proximity gives the ability to locate answers with greater precision. Henry offers you several options to control the search proximity. Just use one of these words in your search:

    logoback to Henry