Select the most important 2-4 words related to your topic. Put the word AND between each new word or idea; this tells the database to look for resources with ALL your terms.
patriot act AND terrorism
Use quotation marks ( " " ) around phrases (two or more words); this tells the database to look for the words in a specific way.
"patriot act" AND terrorism
Use the exclamation point in Westlaw (!) or an asterisk in other databases (*) to truncate a word; this tells the database to look for all words that have the same base. In the example below, search results would include "terror," "terrorist," "terrorists," and "terrorism."
"patriot act" AND terror!
"patriot act" AND terror*