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Communication Foundations 1545: Selecting Keywords

Resources for research projects & speeches

SELECTING KEYWORDS

  • Identify the important concepts and main ideas for your topic.
  • It may help to put your topic in the form of a research question.
  • Think of synonyms for each important concept or main idea.
  • Begin your search and add or modify keywords as necessary.
  • The more you read and learn about your topic, the easier it will be to come up with relevant keywords.
  • Use quotation marks to search for phrases.
  • Use Boolean Operators (AND or OR) to target your search.
  • Truncation: Add an asterisk (*) at the end of a term to search for all possible variations.

TUTORIAL: SELECTING KEYWORDS

TUTORIAL: PHRASE SEARCHING & NESTING

TUTORIAL: BOOLEAN OPERATORS

TUTORIAL: TRUNCATION