Stop Words

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Stop words, words that are too common to search, are not indexed. STN stop words include:

A, ABOUT, AFTER, ALL, ALREADY, ALSO, ALTHOUGH, ALWAYS, AMONG, AN, ANY, ARE, AS, AT, BE, BECAUSE, BEEN, BETWEEN, BOTH, BUT, BY, COULD, DO, DOES, DURING, EACH, EITHER, FOR, FROM, FURTHER, HAD, HAS, HAVE, HAVING, HERE, HOWEVER, IF, IN, INTO, IS, IT, ITS, MAY, MORE, MOREOVER, MOST, MUST, NO, OF, ON, ONLY, OTHER, OUR, SEE, SEEN, SHOULD, SINCE, SUCH, THAN, THAT, THE, THEIR, THEM, THEN, THERE, THEREFORE, THESE, THEY, THIS, THOSE, THOUGH, THROUGH, THUS, TO, WAS, WE, WERE, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHETHER, WHICH, WHILE, WHOSE, WILL, WITH, WITHIN, WOULD

When you enter a stop word in a search box, the stop word is not searched. If the search box contains stop words only, you are alerted and no search is run.

You may enter a phrase containing a stop word as you would any other phrase. For example, entering:

cream of wheat

poses the search question CREAM (NEAR) WHEAT, since STN ignores the stop word of. All records that contain both terms in the same sentence will be retrieved.

Alternatively, you may enclose the phrase in quotation marks to narrow the search. Entering:

"cream of wheat"

poses a search question where CREAM and WHEAT are separated by one or fewer words. STN ignores the stop word of but ensures that the other two terms appear close together.