To enter a query, just type in a few descriptive words and hit the 'enter' key (or click on the Search button) for a list of relevant records. Since the search engine only returns records that contain all the words in your query, refining or narrowing your search is as simple as adding more words to the search terms you have already entered. Your new query will return a smaller subset of the records found for your original "too-broad" query.
For best results, it's important to choose your keywords wisely. Keep these tips in mind: Try the obvious first. If you're looking for information on Sussex, enter "Sussex" rather than "county". Use words likely to appear in a record with the information you want. Make keywords as specific as possible. "artillery" gets more relevant results than "soldier". By default, the search only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "and" between terms. Keep in mind that the order in which the terms are typed will affect the search results. To restrict a search further, just include more terms.
Searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. Use the stem ($) operator to search for terms that have the same linguistic root as the query term. Use the soundex (!) operator to expand queries to include words that have similar sounds; that is, words that sound like other words. This function allows comparison of words that are spelled differently, but sound alike in English. For example, $scream will return records containing the words scream screaming screamed.
Wildcard characters can be used in query expressions to expand word searches into pattern searches. Right truncation involves placing the wildcard on the right-hand-side of the search string. For example, the following query expression finds all terms beginning with the pattern scal :- scal% Left truncation involves placing the wildcard on the left-hand-side of the search string. To find words such as king, wing or sing, you can write your query as follows:- _ing You can write this query more generally as:- %ing You can also combine left-truncated and right-truncated searches to create double-truncated searches. The following query finds all documents that contain words that contain the substring count:- %count%