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Case Sensitivity
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Special Characters
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Natural Language Queries
Typing your query in natural language is a great way to get specific information. We strip out common words for you and return results that contain the most occurrences of the keywords in your query. EXAMPLE: If you type what is the third longest river in the world?, results that contain the most occurrences of the words "third," "longest," "river," and "world" will be returned. These results are ranked according to the number of times the keywords appear.
British Spellings
Britannica.com retrieves encyclopaedia articles from a database based on the text of Encyclopædia Britannica. Because Encyclopædia Britannica is of British origin, many of the articles use British spellings. If your query is an American spelling of a word that has a British equivalent, you may receive a greater number of results by using the British spelling. To determine if an alternative spelling exists for your query, consult this list of British equivalents.
Abbreviations
Using abbreviations in your query can make a dramatic difference in your search results. Many abbreviations are used by Britannica.com's content sources. If you want to find a specific abbreviation to use in your query, search this extensive abbreviation list.
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