Well, this is what the "help" part of GB says: " When two or more words are entered without surrounding quotation marks, only articles containing all of the terms will be returned. They may appear in any order and anywhere in the document. To search for exact phrases, put quotation marks around the phrase (e.g. "Acme Corporation"). NOTE: Searching exact phrases in the First Name or Last Name field is not recommended for two reasons: (1) the order in which last and first names appear often differ (e.g. "Smith, William" vs. "William Smith"), and (2) sometimes a middle initial will be included (e.g. "William E. Smith" vs. "William Smith")" I have not had the experience of the program automagically using nicknames/akas, so I can't speak to that. (Oh, here it is: "When entering first names, keep in mind that variations that might be used - e.g. William, Bill, Will, etc.. Example: (William OR Bill)." So, you can put in all the variations you can think of, using the Boolean operators. On proximity, we have: Proximity Operators Proximity operators allow you to specify just how close two words must occur in a story to be included in your results. See the examples below. military NEAR/5 service - contains military and service within five words, in any order. And, it has wildcards, as well as Boolean operators. So, you might try some of those: http://www.genealogybank.com/gbnk/information/help/advanced_techniques.html# proximity_operators Glad this came up. Long time since I looked at the "help" screen, so I forgot some of the things it can do. Here's more: http://www.genealogybank.com/gbnk/information/help/how_to_search_for_specifi c_people.html Pat -----Original Message----- From: Gale Gorman [mailto:gale_gorman@me.com] Sent: Monday, April 02, 2012 5:09 PM To: Kith-n-Kin Cc: 'Carl M Sprouse'; 'ROOTS Digest Mailing List' Subject: Re: [ROOTS-L] GenealogyBank.com newspaper collection vs. NewspaperArchives.com newspaper collection I think GB automagically adds "Bill" and "Billy" to "William" but I'm not so sure you're correct about the two search names in close proximity to each other. But of course "close" is a relative term. The two names could fall within the same newspaper where I'm hoping for just a space between them. I prefer searches where you can check off "exact match" but then I have other fish to fry than reading meaningless old newspaper articles. Tomorrow I'll go visit Clayton Library and see what turns up on William. The library is closed Monday or I would have spent the afternoon there. Gale Gorman Houston On Apr 2, 2012, at 5:57 PM, Kith-n-Kin wrote: Gale These search engines do a "proximate" model of searching.

Thanks, I'll study the help screen. Gale On Apr 2, 2012, at 7:26 PM, Kith-n-Kin wrote: Well, this is what the "help" part of GB says: " When two or more words are entered without surrounding quotation marks, only articles containing all of the terms will be returned. They may appear in any order and anywhere in the document. To search for exact phrases, put quotation marks around the phrase (e.g. "Acme Corporation"). NOTE: Searching exact phrases in the First Name or Last Name field is not recommended for two reasons: (1) the order in which last and first names appear often differ (e.g. "Smith, William" vs. "William Smith"), and (2) sometimes a middle initial will be included (e.g. "William E. Smith" vs. "William Smith")" I have not had the experience of the program automagically using nicknames/akas, so I can't speak to that. (Oh, here it is: "When entering first names, keep in mind that variations that might be used - e.g. William, Bill, Will, etc.. Example: (William OR Bill)." So, you can put in all the variations you can think of, using the Boolean operators. On proximity, we have: Proximity Operators Proximity operators allow you to specify just how close two words must occur in a story to be included in your results. See the examples below. military NEAR/5 service - contains military and service within five words, in any order. And, it has wildcards, as well as Boolean operators. So, you might try some of those: http://www.genealogybank.com/gbnk/information/help/advanced_techniques.html# proximity_operators Glad this came up. Long time since I looked at the "help" screen, so I forgot some of the things it can do. Here's more: http://www.genealogybank.com/gbnk/information/help/how_to_search_for_specifi c_people.html Pat -----Original Message----- From: Gale Gorman [mailto:gale_gorman@me.com] Sent: Monday, April 02, 2012 5:09 PM To: Kith-n-Kin Cc: 'Carl M Sprouse'; 'ROOTS Digest Mailing List' Subject: Re: [ROOTS-L] GenealogyBank.com newspaper collection vs. NewspaperArchives.com newspaper collection I think GB automagically adds "Bill" and "Billy" to "William" but I'm not so sure you're correct about the two search names in close proximity to each other. But of course "close" is a relative term. The two names could fall within the same newspaper where I'm hoping for just a space between them. I prefer searches where you can check off "exact match" but then I have other fish to fry than reading meaningless old newspaper articles. Tomorrow I'll go visit Clayton Library and see what turns up on William. The library is closed Monday or I would have spent the afternoon there. Gale Gorman Houston On Apr 2, 2012, at 5:57 PM, Kith-n-Kin wrote: Gale These search engines do a "proximate" model of searching.