In Knowledge Base searches, should I use quotation marks?

Normal Knowledge Base searches consist of a few words, with spaces in between, without quotation marks. The Knowledge Base will return all the documents that contain all of those search terms, in any order, regardless of their capitalization. In addition, the Knowledge Base will not distinguish between plural and singular terms; a search on account will return documents containing both "account" and "accounts", and vice versa.

If you use quotation marks, the Knowledge Base will return only documents that contain exactly the term or phrase in your search, with exactly the same case, order, and punctuation. In addition, the Knowledge Base will not ignore any of the terms in your search. Usually, the Knowledge Base ignores common words (such as "the") to speed up your search. If you really want to include the word the in a search, enclose it in quotes.

Why use quotes? In general, searches without quotes will give you more documents in your search return, so you're more likely to see the content you want. However, if you're getting too many documents back in your search results because one of your terms is a specialized one, perhaps quotes would help. For example, if you were looking for information about STEPS workshops at Indiana University and searched on STEPS without quotes, you'd get dozens of irrelevant documents, but searching on "STEPS" would return only documents that include the word in uppercase.

Also see:

• In Knowledge Base searches, are some words ignored?
• How can I search the Knowledge Base on C, X, or STEPS?
• Why does the Knowledge Base ignore some of my search terms, and how can I get them back in my search?