Performing a Terms & Connectors Search

When you perform a keyword search, you must select either Terms & Connectors or Intuitive Search as the search method. A Terms & Connectors search lets you search for documents by specifying words and phrases that describe your research question, along with specialized search connectors to filter and customize the search to get more specific results. You can perform a Terms & Connectors search from any screen that has a Keywords field. In this example, you will use the Search screen.

  1. On the menu bar, click the Search menu. The Search screen appears with Keywords search as the default view.

  2. On the left navigation bar, select a practice area from the Practice Area drop-down list.
  3. Select the appropriate check boxes from the source sets. If you want to select an entire source set, click the check box next to the source set name (such as Editorial Materials).
  4. You can also select a custom source set from the Choose Sources from drop-down list.
  5. Click the Terms & Connectors option below the Keywords field.

  6. Type your search phrase in the Keywords field using terms and search connectors language. Terms can be a complete sentence, phrase, question, or list of keywords, up to 500 characters in length.

    NOTE: When you type more than one keyword in the Keywords field, by default Checkpoint interprets this as implying the "AND" search operator. It retrieves all documents that include at least one occurrence of each of the terms you typed. For more information, see Using Search Connectors and Using Search Examples.

  7. You can also click the Thesaurus/Query Tool link to access these advanced search functions:
    • Click Tools to access the select from previous keywords list that lets you choose one of the last 10 queries you have used.
    • The Tools link also lets you access a special search connectors syntax to help you refine your search. Choose a search connector from the Connectors list and click Append.
    • Click Thesaurus to generate a list of synonyms that appear in the sources you are searching. Click the synonyms you would like to include in the search. To automatically include all synonyms, click the Include all alternatives in query link.
    • Click Spelling to run a spelling check on the query.

  8. Click the Search icon to start your search. Once the search is complete, your results appear in the format determined by your search/display settings.

  9. When you are finished, you can click the Clear All link to remove keywords from the field, clear selected sources, and return to the default Search settings.

You can search for a specific section by entering the section symbol § and equivalent alternatives in the Keywords field. For example, the following search terms produce the same result:

  • §1.1502-13
  • s1.1502-13
  • sec1.1502-13
  • section1.1502-13

NOTE: To enter a § symbol, hold the Alt key while typing 0167 on the numeric keypad of your keyboard.

If you are searching for a section, it is also useful to use the section number by itself, the "OR" search connector ("|"), and the section number and symbol.

For example, use 1.1502-14 | s1.1502.14 instead of 1.1502.14 or s1502.14.

NOTE: When searching for multiple sections, §§, ss, and sections are interchangeable and produce equivalent results.

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