A Search or "query" can be just a word or a phrase. With these advanced search tips, you can expand the focus of your query to give you more complete results.

• Do not use a special character like a quotation mark, $, #, &, @ and so on.

• Look for words with the same beginning or "prefix." For example, in your search, type Commem* to find Commems, Commemorative, Commemorate, Commemorating, and so on.

• Search for all forms of a word. For example, in your search, type sell** to find sell, sells, selling, and sold.

• Search with the keyword NEAR, rather than AND, for words close to each other. For example, both of these queries, Seated and Dollar and Seated near Dollar, look for the words Seated and Dollar on the same page. But with NEAR, the returned pages are ranked in order of proximity: The closer together the words are, the higher the rank of that page.

• Refine your queries with the AND NOT keywords to exclude certain text from your search. For example, if you want to find all instances of Eagle but not Indian, write the following query:

  Eagle AND NOT Indian

• Add the OR keyword to find all instances of either one word or another, for example:

  Liberty OR Saint-Gaudens

  This query finds all pages that mention Liberty or Saint-Gaudens or both.

• Put quotation marks around keywords if you want the search engine to take them literally. For instance, if you type the following query:
  
  "Liberty Seated Dime"

  The search engine will literally look for the complete phrase Liberty Seated Dime. But if you type the same query without the quotation marks:
  
  Liberty Seated Dime

  The search engine searches all documents for any of the words Liberty, Seated, or Dime.

• Use Plain English Searching if you want to search using natural language. The search engine will examine your query, extract nouns and noun phrases and construct a query for you. With Simple Question Searching you can enter any text you want, from a proper question, to a string of words and phrases, without worrying about the query language. For example, if you type in the following query:
  
  "What was the first year Washington Quarters were minted?"

  The search engine will create a query for you automatically and begin the search. Note that when you're using Simple Question Search, the regular query language features are disabled and keywords such as AND, OR, and NEAR are interpreted as normal words.