Wildcards

A wildcard is a character that can be used to replace one or more letters in a search string. This is very useful, for example, when words that mean the same are spelled differently, as in British/American spelling.

Example: In Ovid databases (Ovid Medline, Ovid Embase, and Ovid PsycINFO), wom#n finds woman or women. Colo?r finds color or colour.

Note: Wildcard symbols vary from database to database. The most common are ?, #, and $. Check the help function in each database if you are unsure.