While these examples show the words in the titles of articles, databases can also search for phrases in other fields, such as author, subject heading, and text.

Benefits of Phrase Searching

Phrase searching helps you be very precise with your search. Imagine you searched for the keywords United States and didn't indicate that the two words are a phrase. Your search could retrieve an unrelated article which contains the two words but not next to each other, such as the following:

The chief executive officer of the United Fruit Company reported better than average growth in the last quarter. He states, "We're doing better than ever."

Databases differ in how you enter a phrase search. Here are two examples of different ways to conduct a phrase search:

Enclose your phrase in quotations marks

For example: 

Use a pull down menu

For example: the exact phraseany of the wordsall of the words

Always check the  or tips page of the system you are using!