| Nouns and Objects
Almost without exception, the central keywords in your queries will be nouns. Though sometimes adverbs and adjectives can help refine your search, the key pivot point is a noun, or series of nouns. Why is this? The most precise terms we have in language are for tangible, concrete "things" or objects. Actions and modifiers are very diverse, easily substitutable, and generally not universally applied in any given description. For, example, take the concept of "fast". A thesaurus will give 75 or more different words for fast. Here are some counts from AltaVista for numbers of Web documents containing these terms: fast 4,014,683Or, alternatively, take a modifying concept like 'color'. Again, here are the AltaVista document counts: color 4,452,189Note three aspects about these lists. First, some modifiers are also nouns like truck 'fleet', the bird 'swift', pool table 'slate' or Justice 'White'. Second, a concept like speed or color can be described in lots of ways (most of which are not shown). Third, you generally don't know how others would describe the same thing. In our example of Jan's mystery hunting bird [Topic 5], would someone else describe it as "fast", "quick" or "like a bolt from the sky"? Would someone else describe the bird as "gray", "grey", "slate-gray" or "smoky"? The same kind of ambiguity and substitutability applies to actions or verbs. Does the bird "fly", "soar", "swoop" or "glide", or any of the other dozens of ways the act of flying can be described? As a general rule, try to avoid using action terms and mostly try to avoid using modifiers in your queries. Where exceptions to these guidelines may make sense is when a modifier helps to precisely define your object, such as in "Limburger cheese." We've thus gone through a process that has led us to these possible objects as the focal points for constructing our query terms: birdThe obvious main subject is bird. The next few topics will concentrate on it; we'll return to the other objects as we later refine our final query. |