Often your tax research tasks demand more complex analysis. In these cases, using plain keywords may not allow you to precisely specify your search topic. Checkpoint provides you with advanced search syntax that help you to perform more sophisticated and focused searches.
Search connectors are symbols and words you can use in conjunction with your keywords to qualify their relationships and meaning. A list of search connectors and examples of how you can incorporate them into your search are presented below. Click Search Tips and Search Examples for more information.
| To locate documents: | Use: | Example: |
|---|---|---|
| containing any of my keywords | OR, | | funding OR deficiency |
| containing at least one instance of each of my keywords | Space, &, AND | funding deficiency |
| that contain one keyword but exclude another | ^, NOT | funding NOT deficiency |
| containing my exact phrase | " " | "funding deficiency" |
| containing variations of my keywords | * (asterisk) | deprecia* |
| disabling automatic retrieval of plurals and equivalencies | # (pound sign) | #damage (retrieves only damage, not damages) |
| containing single-character variations | ? (question mark) | s????holder (retrieves stockholder, shareholder) |
| containing compound words | - (hyphen) | e-mail (retrieves e-mail e mail, email) |
| Note:
The # character does not turn off the automatic retrieval of possessives
(for example, customer's).
Because Checkpoint uses the characters * and / as search connectors, you cannot search for them as you would for other text or characters. If you include these characters in parentheses, they still function as search connectors. |
||
| To search for a word or phrase: | Use: | Example: |
| within n words of another (in any order) |
/# (where # equals number) | "disclosure exception" /7 negligence |
| within n words of another (in exact order) |
pre/# (where # equals number) | "disclosure exception" pre/7 negligence |
| within the same
sentence (20 words) as another (in any order) |
/s | "disclosure exception" /s negligence |
| within the same
sentence (20 words) as another (in exact order) |
pre/s | "disclosure exception" pre/s negligence |
| within one paragraph
(50 words) as another (in any order) |
/p | "disclosure exception" /p negligence |
| within one paragraph
(50 words) as another (in exact order) |
pre/p | "disclosure exception" pre/p negligence |
| that appears at least 1 to 255 times in a document | atleast#() | atleast25(disclosure exception) |
You can also use multiple search connectors when constructing a search string. For example, the phrase:
("partner deduct*" /p "excise tax") not "income tax"
finds documents containing the phrase partner deduction or partner deductible and the phrase excise tax within a paragraph (or 50 words) of each other, but not if the phrase income tax appears in the document.
When a keyword search contains more than one type of connector, precedence
rules affect which documents are retrieved by the search. Keyword connectors
are processed according to the following precedence sequence in which
OR (|) has the highest precedence (and thus, is processed first)
and NOT (^) has the lowest precedence (and thus, is processed last):
|, PRE/#, PRE/S, PRE/P, /#, /S, /P, & (space), ^
Where # is a number between 1 and 255.
The precedence rules can be over-ridden when parentheses are used in constructing a query, for example: (FUNDING & DEFICIENCY) | BANKRUPTCY.
Since | has higher precedence that &, | would normally be processed first. However, with the use of parentheses, the & operator would be processed before the | operator.
Note that some uses of parentheses to override precedence rules are considered illegal and are reported as a search error, for example: (INCOME ^ TAX) /P CORPORATE.
See Search Examples for more examples of using search connectors.