What is Truncation and How Does it Work?

Truncation is a search technique used in databases to replace the ending of a word with a symbol. It is also known as wildcard search and allows you to search for a term and its spelling variants all at once. When using truncation, it is important to be aware that placing the truncation symbol too early can be counterproductive. To truncate a search term, you need to do a keyword search in a database, but remove the end of the word and add an asterisk (*).

For example, if you wanted to find information on how do i start an ndis business, you would enter 'how do i start an ndis busines*' into the search bar. This is very useful when you know that one of your search terms has multiple endings, but all variations represent basically the same idea. Truncation is a symbol added to the end of the root of a word to tell the database to search for all forms of a word. In order for databases to recognize that you are using truncation, you must add a wildcard to the root of the word. This will help you complete your search faster, as you won't have to manually type and search every variation of the word.

However, it is important to be careful not to truncate a keyword too early, otherwise you will receive a lot of unwanted results.