Searching with phrases and phrase flex
Learn how to search the archive using phrases
In historical newspaper text, words that belong together conceptually don't always appear side-by-side. Variations in 19th-century prose, extra descriptive adjectives, middle names, or OCR character gaps can mean an exact-match phrase search misses highly relevant articles.
Phrase flex controls how rigidly or loosely the engine enforces the distance between words in a phrase.
How phrase flex works
When you set a flex value, you are telling the search engine how many ‘word jumps’ (or token moves) it is permitted to make to align your search terms.
- Flex 0 (default / standard phrase): Words must appear side-by-side in the exact
order specified (e.g., "Richmond Green"). - Flex 1–8: Allows up to N intervening words between your search terms, as well
as transposed word order if the flex budget permits.
Rule of thumb: A flex value of 3 means the engine can find your terms with up to 3
intervening words between them (or handle small order inversions).
Practical examples
| Search syntax | Flex level | What if finds | Why it works |
| "Richmond Green" | 0 | "...near Richmond Green today..." | Direct, exact phrase match. |
| "Hammersmith Apollo"~2 |
2 | "...Hammersmith Palace Apollo..." | Allows up to 2 intervening words between terms. |
| "Richmond Green"~3 |
3 | "...green in the historic Richmond.." | Captures descriptive insertions like "in the historic", and allows word reordering. |
| "Star Wars"~7 | 7 | "...wars that happen to be near a star..." | High flex tolerates large gaps or transposed word order. |
Important behavioural notes
-
Stop words count towards phrase flex
Ignored stop words (e.g., the, of, and) still count as physical word positions/tokens in OCR text. If an article reads "Richmond on the Green", the words "on" and "the" count toward the flex distance. -
Use ~N in search box syntax
In the UI slider, flex is adjusted visually. In the direct search box syntax, simply add ~N after your quotes (e.g., "phrase words"~3). -
Wildcards cannot be used within quotes
* or ? cannot be used as wildcards inside quotes. Adjust phrase flex instead if you are trying to catch variations in intermediate phrasing.