Which special character is used for partial word searches?

• A. Question mark (?)
• B. Asterisk (*)
• C. Hyphen (-)
• D. Exclamation (!)

Answer: (B)

Wildcards enable flexible searches; the asterisk acts as a wildcard for any number of characters, so a partial word like "cont*" will find "contract," "contracts," "contracting," etc. The question mark covers only a single character, and the hyphen or exclamation marks aren’t used to widen a term in this way. Therefore the asterisk is the tool for partial word searches.