As you develop and refine your topic, start to identify keywords. The video below discusses why this is necessary to use keywords when searching for scholarly information.
Choosing keywords (Norwich University Libraries) [time=2:59]
Takeaway: People may describe a concept using different words than you. Take time to identify several synonyms for different key concepts in your topics.
These three words can be very handy when you are using databases.
Pro tip: CAPITALIZE these words in databases to ensure that they work properly. Some databases require you to put them in all caps. Best to be safe and get in the habit of capitalizing all the time.
Sometimes you will be looking for a bunch of related words that all start with the same beginning. For example: computer, compute, computing, computational...
In these instances, you can use the asterisk symbol (*) to truncate these words, like this:
comput*
This will return all words that start with these six letters.
You may also want to use the pound/hash (#) symbol for spelling variations within a word. For example:
col#r
This will return the words "color" as well as "colour" (the British spelling).