Search Concord - Boolean, Wildcard, Punctuation, and Hyphenated Word Searches

Concord supports boolean, wildcard, and some punctuation searches. This article describes how to use them.

Boolean Searches



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AND

Use AND between search terms to find citations where all of the words in your search appear in the same sentence or verse. 

NOTE: By default, Concord does an AND search when you enter two or more words, so it's only necessary to use this when using a combination of several search types. Separate your search groups by parentheses.`

(Christ OR Jesus) AND (life OR liv*)

All sentences where "Christ" or "Jesus" appear with the word "life" or wildcards of the root "liv" (such as live, living, lived, lives, liveth)

OR

Use OR to indicate that you want to find sentences of verses containing any of the search words or phrases entered.

"kingdom of heaven" OR "kingdom of God"

All references to the exact phrase "kingdom of heaven" and all references to "kingdom of God"





(immortal OR eternal) life

All references to "immortal" or "eternal" and "life" in the same sentence, but not necessarily adjacent in as a phrase (as shown in the example above)

NOT

Use NOT to exclude certain words from your search. Type NOT in front of the word to exclude.

Christ NOT "Church of Christ"

All references to "Christ", excluding the references when it is used in the title of the church.





heal* NOT health*

heal, heals, healing, healings, healed, healer, and healers NOT health, healthy, healthier

Wildcard Searches using an Asterisk [*] or Question Mark [?]

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Asterisk at end (Finds all words that begin with the letters preceding the asterisk)

heal*

heal, heals, healing, healings, healed, healer, healers,  health, healthy, healthier

Asterisk in middle (Finds words with the same surrounding letters)

m*hood

manhood, motherhood

Question Mark at end (Finds words that are one additional character)

fancie?

fancies, fancied

Question Mark at middle (Finds words with one different character in the middle)

wom?n

woman, women

Asterisk and Question Mark (Same beginning of words with one different character)

wom?n*

woman, woman's, womanhood, womankind, womanly, women, women's, womenservants

These don't work...





Asterisk at beginning

*kind

(mankind,
womankind, etc)

No results found

Asterisk at both beginning and end of word

*courage*

(encourage,
encouragement,
courageously, etc)

No results found

Question Mark at beginning

?light

(slight, blight,
flight, etc)

No results found

Punctuation Searches using Question Mark and Exclamation Point



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?

As noted under the "Wildcard Searches" section, the question mark can be used as a wildcard to replace a single letter in a word.

If you would instead like to search for a word or phrase that ends with a question mark, you must include a backslash (\) before the question mark (?). This will tell Concord to look for where question marks appear as punctuation marks in the book text.

\?

man\?
God\?

All questions marks in the text will show in the results.

All sentences where a keyword is immediately followed by a question mark. 

!

The exclamation point uses the same syntax as the question mark – use a backslash (\) before the exclamation point (!).

\!

No\!
God\!

\? [SH 465-500]

All exclamation points in the text will show in the results. 

All sentences where a keyword is immediately followed by an exclamation point.

Displays all questions in Recapitulation in Science and Health.



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!

The exclamation point, when used alone (without a backslash), signifies “NOT.” This will show search results that do not have the word(s) following the ! in the same sentence or verse. 

Christ !Jesus

The search results will yield search results with the word “Christ” alone, not followed by “Jesus”



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-*

Find various endings of a hyphenated prefix. 

Soul-*

Soul-created, Soul-existence, Soul-filled, Soul-full, Soul-inspired, Soul-less, Soul-sense, soul-visit

Exact Word Search Using Quotation Marks

 

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““

Use quotation marks before and after your search terms to find exact phrases in the same word order.

“Holy Ghost”

“Holy Ghost” when the words appear in consecutive order.