Searching for Santa
Mr. Frerichs
Bardonia Elementary School

You won't find Santa if you're not good.

It is important to know good ways to search for things on the computer. 

One way to be good at searching is to use truncation.  Most search programs allow for a symbol to be used at the end of a word to retrieve different endings of your word.  This is called truncation. 

Here's how it works.  Instead of typing in the whole word for Japan, you could type Jap*.  The program will then return all words that include Jap as their first three letters, including Japan and Japanese.

Note: The symbol * is called a "wild card."  When you play a card game a wild card can be anything.  Likewise the * can be anything.

Different symbols such as $ or # are used for truncation in different databases and search engines. To determine the symbols in the database you're using, check the online help screens or ask a librarian.