Research help

Once you have identified keywords, you can apply basic search strategies to them.

The most important basic search strategy is putting quotation marks around phrases. 

What do quotation marks do?

Quotation marks tell the search engine to search for that exact phrase instead of searching for the words separately.

• Phrases are single topic ideas that use more than one word to describe them, like "forest fires."
• Phrases have meanings and context that search engines do not understand until you put quotation marks around them.
  • Example: My topic is about "climate change" (long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns), not change in climate (a phrase used in relation to evolving work, school, or cultural environments).

You do not need to add quotation marks around single words.