The Advanced radio button allows you to create more complex and precise searches combining Boolean operators (+/-), phrase searches and wild cards (*). The search engine used by this site is MySQL, and the Advanced radio button is designed to facilitate the use of the full search syntax available in its Boolean mode.
Each word in the Proceedings and the Ordinary of Newgate's Accounts has been separately indexed and is available for searching, but in order to speed up searches all one and two letter words have been excluded from the index; as have some common three letters words. These include:
and, any, are, but, can, did, etc, far, few, for, get, got, had, has, her, him, his, how, inc, its, let, ltd, may, nor, not, one, our, out, own, per, saw, say, see, she, sub, sup, the, too, try, two, use, via, viz, was, way, who, why, yes, yet, you
Entering more than one word in the keyword search box with the Advanced radio button selected will result in a search on any of the words specified. Entering Mooregate Moorgate Moregate will result in a combined search on all three spelling variants. In this context it is important to note that hyphens and other forms of punctuation are treated as spaces. A search for coffee-house will produce the same results as a search for coffee house, and will locate all text in which either word, coffee or house, can be found. This search will not, however, locate the single word coffeehouse. To find all instances of the words coffee and house next to one another (with or without a hyphen), place the term coffee house within double quotation marks.
By including a plus sign (+) before each word being searched you can ensure that only texts in which ALL words in the query are present are returned. So, +coffee +house will produce texts in which both coffee and house appear.
A query text such as +coffee newspaper argument will return texts in which coffee is present, together with either newspaper or argument (or both).
A minus sign (-) can be used to specify words to be specifically excluded from the search. +coffee +house -newspaper will return texts in which coffee and house are both present, but will exclude all texts in which the word newspaper appears.
Multi-word phrases can be located by enclosing the constituent words in double quotation marks ("). "Great exhibition" will return entries where the phrase great exhibition is used. More complex phrases such as "that bit of stuff you owe me" can also be located in this way. Hyphens are treated as spaces, so results for searches on phrases such as "tea pot" will contain the expression tea-pot, but not teapot. When searching on phrases, one and two letter words and words on the Stop List are included in the search.
Plus + and Minus - signs can be used in combination with keyword phrases. A search on "St Giles" -Cripplegate, will produce results in which the phrase St Giles, as in St Giles in the Fields, appears, but the word Cripplegate does not. This is particularly useful for eliminating irrelevant results.
A limited Wild Card function can be applied by using an asterisk (*). The asterisk stands for zero or more letters and can only be used at the end of a word. Mcla* will return entries including McLaren and McLachlan etc. Wild Cards can be used in combination with Phrase searches and Boolean operators to construct more complex queries; but they can never be used at the beginning of a word.
For a comprehensive guide to the syntax available, see the MySQL Reference Documentation. See About this Project for details on the technical implementation of this search facility.