Wildcard Characters (Truncation Characters)
You can substitute a special symbol known as a wildcard character for one or more letters when you do not want to include, or do not know, exact spellings.
There are three wildcard characters:
The asterisk (*) stands for any number of characters, including none
The question mark (?) stands for exactly one character
The exclamation point (!) stands for one or no characters
Sample searches
carib* finds: Carib, Caribs, Caribbean, caribe, caribou, etc.
psych????y finds: psychiatry and psychology (but not psychotherapy)
colo!r finds: color and colour
TIP: Many Gale resources require a minimum number of characters (usually three) before you can use the asterisk wildcard, so the following search would not be allowed: ma*
Truncation
The asterisk (*) character is often referred to as a truncation character. It allows you to take a root word or common part of a word and look for any ending. For example, content about teenage drivers may use the terms, teenage drivers, teen driver, teen driving, and so on. To find all of these variations in a single search, type only the common letters followed by the asterisk (*), as follows:
teen* driv*