Is it possible to restrict searches to whole words?

cpsyctc

I think the answer is "no" but I can't seem to find definitive confirmation anywhere. To give a concrete example of what I mean, I just wanted to find some papers I know I have in Zotero that touch on the idea of "emic" and "etic" but when I try to search for these I don't seem to be able to get rid of "systemic" and "synthetic" (for example) and what I want is completely lost in false positive hits. Am I missing something? TIA, Chris

bwiernik

If you search in quotes with a space before these words “ emic” and “ etic”, you will capture only words with those letters at the beginning. This will capture everything except papers with those as the first word of the title.

cpsyctc

Aha. Stupidly, I thought of that but didn't try it and it works as you say but it won't catch the word being used as a single word or a starting word in a keyword. That's a real help and step forward but I think a "whole word" qualifier that worked properly, i.e. picked up first words and single word keywords would be a genuinely useful addition to Zotero.

dstillman

it won't catch the word being used as a single word or a starting word in a keyword

Sorry, what do you mean by that?

bwiernik

They mean that searching with a quoted space won't capture an that starts with the keyword (i.e., " emic" won't capture the title "Emic approaches to personality measurement"), or titles containing only one word.

dstillman

Sure it will. Why wouldn't it?

dstillman

Oh, sorry, I missed the "quoted space" part.

dstillman

You could find "Emic approaches to personality measurement" with "emic " (space at the end), of course. For a single-word match, you'd have to use the "is" operator in an advanced search and search on specific fields.

cpsyctc

Aha "is" is exactly what I needed: perfect. Thanks.