•?S PREEN OR PREENED OR PREENING
•             106  PREEN
•              36  PREENED
•             485  PREENING
•      S1     602  PREEN OR PREENED OR PREENING
•?S MALLARD OR MALLARDS
•            1680  MALLARD
•             884  MALLARDS
•      S2    2096  MALLARD OR MALLARDS
•
•
• … There has got to be an easier way …
•
•There is and we’ll learn it soon!
It would be nice to have a way to take just the root word and allow for variant endings.  That is usually know as truncation.  The symbol for truncation varies with the database search syntax.  In many Internet search engines, the asterisk (*) is used.  In DIALOG, the question mark (?) is used.  We’ll go into further rules of truncation later, but if you want to know the basic method … we could have used our truncation symbol with each word:

?S PREEN?        [searches for all words beginning with “preen”]

?S MALLARD?     [searches for all words beginning with “mallard”]

The single question mark allows for multiple character truncation in DIALOG.   More on truncation later … I promise!