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ENGL 2311: Tech Writing Online

This guide was created for Brinkman's ENGL 2311 class; Summer 2025.

Using "regular" Google

Tips for searching Google:

1. Use Boolean Search operators to conduct searches: AND, OR, NOT to do more concise searches. You can use the words themselves or the + and - signs in your search strings. **You are refining the results retrieved by combining or excluding keywords.

Examples:

  • AND- retrieved records must contain all the terms. Ex: “Does taking aspirin cause Reye’s Syndrome in children?” Aspirin + children + Reyes’s syndrome; ***The more concepts you AND together, the fewer records you will retrieve. Provides results that contain both or all keywords. 

  • OR-broadens a concept and allows you to use synonyms; Examples: kidney diseases OR renal diseases; horticultural OR agricultural; Provides results that contain either keyword.  

  • NOT- allows you to exclude concepts not relevant to your search- EX: Dementia NOT Alzheimer’s; Provides results that contain the first keyword but not the second.

2.  Use Quotes
To find words in a web page or document in the exact same order, put quotes around them. The search terms must be kept together for correct results when using quotation marks.

Examples:

"Song of Solomon"      "United States"   "climate change"

3. Exclude non-necessary words
Use only those keywords that describe your topic:

How did Frederick Douglass affect the Civil War? should be Frederick Douglass Civil War or "Frederick Douglass" "Civil War"

4. Search synonyms
You can search for the synonyms of words by putting a tilde in front of the search term:

~love would search for "marriage," "romantic," "romance," as well as "love."

5. Use the asterisk (*) to replace unknown words within quotes. 

Google can still look for something even if you can't remember the full name, or don't know a specific date, etc:

Examples:

"roe v *" would search for court cases that began with "roe."

 ""a bird in the hand is worth * in the bush"" will return results that include all variations of the phrase. 

Google Scholar

****Google Scholar is a great resource to use for research. Use the following directions to link Google Scholar to LSC databases.

How to Link Google Scholar to LSC databases: 

  1. Go to scholar.google.com 

  1. Click on the menu icon in the upper left corner.  Picture

  1. Click on “Settings” 

  1. Click “Library Links” 

  1. Search by typing Lone Star College in box and click on the search button 

  1. Check “Lone Star College” 

  1. Save. 

 

Sample searches related to this assignment:

job outlook for nurses and AI

AI and future job prospects in *(whatever career you are interested in)

career trends affected by AI

engineering careers and AI 

college professor careers and AI

generative AI and future job prospects

 


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