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Boolean: OR Connector

Use of Boolean operators allows you considerable flexibility in your search. As another example, if you wanted to retrieve articles that dealt with either plagiarism or cheating, then the appropriate Boolean operator is OR.

Boolean OR example

The search plagiarism OR cheating will retrieve articles that mention either term. The use of OR generally will retrieve a larger set of results.

OR is especially useful when you are searching with terms that are synonyms or that deal with the same basic concept. Using the OR in your search will retrieve articles that contain any of the synonyms that you use.

Effective use of Boolean operators is essential to sophisticated research.

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May 4th, 2004