Alternate Terms

To increase the likelihood of finding relevant material, you need to think about alternative terms that can be used to describe the same concepts.

You should think about:

• synonyms (eg mobile telephones, cellular telephones)
• plural/singular forms (eg women, woman)
• spelling variations(eg behaviour, behavior)
• variations of a root word (eg feminism, feminist, feminine)
• acronyms (eg chief executive officer, CEO)

Many books, journals, webpages and databases are produced in the United States and therefore favour North American spelling and terminology, so include these in your alternative expressions if appropriate.

Sometimes using a thesaurus or specialised dictionary might help, particularly if you aren't clear about some terminology or concepts.