In OIE a search can be performed directly from the exercise page or from the corpus search page. The first search must always be performed from the exercise page; the corpus search page will then open in a new window. To perform searches from the corpus search page, you need to keep that window open.

In TCP a search is always performed from the main TCP page.

A simple search is performed by typing in a single word or a string of words in the search window in the following manner:

When you have typed in your search string (either one or several words), hit the search button (Search OIEC) and wait for the search result.

The first of these search strings ("find") will return occurrences of the orthographic word find, while the second search will return occurrences of the string of words watch them carefully. I.e. you search for the exact match of what you have typed in the search window.

The search result is shown in the form of a concordance, and in the case of "find" it will look like this:

Read more about how to interpret the search result here.

(To close Simple search instructions click on "Simple search" above)

There are two main kinds of advanced searches:

Wildcard

Sorting

A wildcard search can be performed directly from the exercise page or from the corpus search page. A search including sorting can only be performed from the corpus search page. (This means that in OIE the first search of your session only includes default sorting.)

A wildcard stands for any character in the search string and is expressed by an asterisk (*). A wildcard can be put at the beginning of words, at the end of words, in the middle of words, and between words in the following manner:

When you have typed in your search string, hit the search button (Search OIEC) and wait for the search result.

The first of these search strings ("find*") will return occurrences of all words beginning with "find" (find, finds, finding, finder, etc.). The second search will return occurrences of words ending in "wind" (wind, unwind, whirlwind, etc.). The third search will return occurrences of words beginning in "un" and ending in "ed" (unfounded, unleaded, unfed, etc.). The final search, with the wildcard between words, will return occurrences of watch followed by an unspecified word followed by carefully (watch tham carefully, watch him carefully, etc.).

You can also combine these searches in one search string, e.g.:

This search will return hits of words beginning with "watch" followed by an unspecified word, followed by words ending in "ly" (watch him carefully, watch cricket critically, watched me sternly, etc.).

By sorting is meant the way in which the concordances are sorted. (The concordance is the display of the search result.) The default sorting is by keyword, which is to say that the corpus browser sorts the results by keyword, i.e. find will be displayed before finds, while finding will be displayed before finds but after find if the search string is "find"; capital letters precede lower case letters in the ordering of the results. Apart from that there is no particular order. Example of the search string "find*":

The other options for how to sort the concordance are by "left word", by "right word" and by "source" (OIE only). You can choose either of these on the corpus search page (following "Sort concordance by"). If you sort concordances by left word, the words to the left of the keyword (i.e. the first word of your search string) are sorted alphabetically (capital letters still precede lower case letters). Similarly, if you sort concordances by right word, the words to the right of your search string will be sorted alphabetically. Examples og the search string "highlights":

If you sort concordances by source, the concordance lines are sorted according to which text-type, or source, they are found in.

Read more about how to interpret the search result here.

(To close Advanced search instructions click on "Advanced search" above)

Specific search hints:

(1) Specify your search to get relevant hits, i.e. try to avoid too wide searches such as "a", "the". If, for instance, you want to find out when/if "society" requires an article try one of the following:

(2) Specify your search to get relevant hits, i.e. try to avoid too wide searches such as "people". If, for instance, you want to find out if/when "people" requires singular or plural concord, try one or more of the following:

Food for thought: what do the hits for the search string "people is" tell you?

(3) Try alternative search strings if the corpus returns few or no hits for your search string, e.g. "dress oneself"

(4) Avoid too specific searches to get relevant hits, i.e. the search string "made them feel happy" returns no hits. If you want to find out whether the expression "made X feel" should be followed by an adjective or an adverb, try one of the following: