Search Tips

At its simplest, a query can be just a word or a phrase. But with the tips on this page, you can expand the focus of your query to give you more complete results. 

• Look for words with the same prefix. For example, in the Search form type aud* to find audio, AudioX, and so on.

• Search for all forms of a word. For example, in the form type mix** to find mix, mixing, and mixed.

• Search with the keyword NEAR, rather than AND, for words close to each other. For example, both of these queries, smpte and mtc and smpte near mtc, look for the words smpte and mtc 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 mixing but not vocal, write the following query:

  mixing AND NOT vocal

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

  Audio OR MIDI

  This query finds all pages that mention Audio or MIDI 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:
  
  "audio and midi"

  The Search engine will literally look for the complete phrase audio and midi. But if you type the same query without the quotation marks:
  
  audio and midi

        The Search engine searches all documents for the words audio and midi.