Use this section of the User Guide to learn more about search syntax and how to choose the best approach for each search. Choosing the right technique is about understanding your goals.
For example:
If your goal is to search as broadly as possible to ensure you don’t miss anything, then searching lung AND cancer may be the right technique.
If your goal is to have more precise results and reduce the number of incorrect results, then searching "lung cancer" may be the right technique.
Or maybe finding a middle ground is the best approach, in which case searching "lung cancer"~4 may be the right technique. The ~4 combined with quotes searches for words close to each other, which would return results like “cancer of the lung” or “lung and bowel cancer."
There is no one-technique-fits-all for searches, and this section will help you assess your goals and find the approach that’s best for your search.
To give you an idea of how different searches will return different results, visit the Search Comparisons tutorial here.