Search Results

View and interpret your search results.




This page will provide instructions on navigating the search results window, including viewing results in context, seeing the distribution of results, deleting duplicate results, exporting results, or analyzing the results with analysis reports.

There are two main sections of the search results window: 1) results and 2) the Frequency Distribution Report.

Results Window


Results



View each search hit in context. The hit will be highlighted in blue and displayed in its own pane. At the top of each pane, view a search hit’s citation.

Tip: Double-click on a result to view it in larger context.



Go to Reference

Each search result is given a sequential reference number. The Go to Reference option allows you to jump to a specific result by its number.

How to Use:
  1. Right click within the search results window.
  2. Click Go to Reference....
  3. Type a reference number.
  4. Click OK.


Previous and Next Reference

Shortcut: ALT + N / ALT + P

Navigate between search results (references) within the book view.

How to Use:
  1. Double-click on a search result to see it in the book view.
  2. In the WordCruncher toolbar, click Go > Next Reference or Go > Previous Reference.
  3. To go back to the search results window, press Escape. (You may have to do this multiple times to get back to the search results window.)


Copy Results

Right-click within the search results window to copy results and export them.

How to Use:
  1. Right-click on a search result.
  2. Select one of the following options:
    1. Copy: Copy all results.
    2. Copy Citation: Copy the citation of a single result.
    3. Copy Preferences: Adjust the output.


Select (Save) Results

Move specific search results to the Selected tab (top of the search results window).

Shortcut: Select the green checkmark.

How to Use:
  1. Right-click on a search result.
  2. In the drop-down, select Select.
    1. Select > Select Reference: Select a single search result.
    2. Select > Select All References: Select every result in the search results window.
  3. Click on the Selected tab.


Delete Results

Remove results from the search results window.

Delete
How to Use:
  1. Right-click on a search result.
  2. In the drop-down, select Delete.
    1. Delete Reference: Remove a single search result.
    2. Delete All References: Remove all results in the current list.
    3. Delete Matching Synchronous References: Remove search pairs within the same level.
Delete Matching Synchronous References

Remove results where search pairs occur within the same level (e.g., the paragraph).

Some punctuation, such as parentheses and quotation marks, occur in pairs. Most of the time, edited text should use complete pairs of punctuation. To find incomplete pairs, search for both characters in the matching pair and remove complete pairs, leaving only the potential typos.

Example:
  1. Search for ^(.
  2. Click the pin icon in the top right of the window to pin the results.
  3. Search for ^).
  4. Click the pin icon in the top right of the window to pin the results.
  5. Go to Window > Split Vertically to show multiple results in the Search Results window.
  6. Open the pinned List 1 on the left side and pinned List 2 on the right side.
  7. Right-click > Delete > Delete Matching Synchronous References.

Incomplete pairs, if any, will remain.

Delete Duplicates

Deleting duplicates might be a good option if you are interested in...

  • Knowing how many sections of text have the search hit.
  • Limiting the results to one hit per text.
  • Finding incomplete pairs (e.g. parentheses or quotes).
How to Use:
  1. Right-click within the search results window.
  2. In the drop-down, select Delete Duplicates.
    1. Lowest Level: If your search term appears several times within the lowest level (e.g., the search hit appears 3 times in one paragraph), you can remove the duplicate references and only include the results for the first occurrence.
    2. Other Levels: The same action as the Lowest Level option, but instead of selecting the lowest level (like a paragraph), you can choose the level (e.g., chapter, book, or volume).
Example:
  1. Search for the word dream in Early English Books Online 1 (EEBO), (over 12,000 hits).
  2. Delete duplicates on the same page to see only the first instance of dream per page (eliminating 2,000 “duplicate” hits).
  3. EEBO, a collection of thousands of early English texts, is divided into centuries, decades, years, texts, and pages.



Keep Sample

Select a sample of the results.

How to Use:
  1. Right-click on a search result.
  2. Select Keep Only a Sample.
  3. Specify the size of the sample (Percent or Size).
  4. Specify the sampling technique.
    1. Random
    2. Fixed: A fixed interval (e.g., every 10 results).
  5. Click OK.


Display Options

Add/Delete Windows

Change the number of search result panes that appear.

In the WordCruncher toolbar, click Results > Add Window or Results > Delete Window.

Split the Window

View multiple search results windows side-by-side.

In the WordCruncher toolbar, click Window > Split Horizontally or Window > Split Vertically.



Frequency Distribution Report



The lower half of the search results window is the Frequency Distribution Report. This report shows a table with the number of times your search term appears in your text, in addition to information about the distribution of search hits across the text.

Frequency Distribution Report


Columns

To change the columns displayed, right-click > Show or Hide Columns.

The report generates the following columns:

Column Description Example
Table of contents A list of the references within the book. References with 0 results are not shown.

The + button will display lower references, such as chapter and paragraph.
Actual The frequency of the search term within the reference.
The search term occurs 1,010 times in Comedies.
≈Expected If search hits were evenly distributed throughout the book, this is the number of hits we would expect to see in a given reference. (Based on the size of the reference and the total number of search hits.)

If you place bounds on your search query, the expected frequency will be inaccurate for the bound (using the expected of the whole section). Likewise, subwords or tagwords in your search argument will distort the statistic. There is a size variable used in the computation, and it uses the number of normal words found within a reference. Many subwords or tagwords can be associated with a single normal word, so this size variable inaccuracy will invalidate the statistic.
Rating The rating has a range of -10.0 to +10.0. It quantifies the significance of the number of search hits in each reference. The rating is not a statistic but attempts to normalize the data by taking into account the size of the reference and the number of search hits found in it. Learn more about the rating column below.
≈Actual/Expected A bar chart comparing Actual Frequency (red) and Expected Frequency (green).
Difference Actual frequency minus Expected frequency.
Total The total number of words within the reference.
%Actual The percent of the total number of hits found in each reference.
≈%Expected The relative size of the reference (the percent of the total text contained in each reference).
%Difference % Actual frequency minus % Expected frequency.
% of total The size of the reference relative to the size of the entire book. When you add up all of the percentages in this column, it should equal 100. Here, you can see that comedies are 29.562% of The Riverside Shakespeare.

Rating Column

The Rating column has a value between -10 and 10. If the rating is closer to 10, the actual frequency is much higher than its expected frequency. This formula is used to calculate the rating:

Rating=(ActualExpected)2Expected+1

This formula is similar to calculating a chi-square statistic for each cell in a table.

To avoid dividing by 0, a 1 is added to the Expected value.
Ratings greater than 10.0 are rounded down to 10.0.
Ratings less than -10.0 are rounded up to -10.0.

The expected values used in computing this rating are from Normal type words in the All Text (excluding any text from your notes).

Note: If you place bounds on your search query, the expected frequency will be inaccurate for the bounded section.



Save Data

Right-click within the Frequency Distribution Report to copy and export data.

How to Use:
  1. Right-click on a row.
  2. Select one of the following options:
    1. Copy
    2. Copy All
    3. Export all (Frequency Distribution)


Frequency Distribution Options

Customize the data displayed.

Display all entries (including those with no hits)

By default, a section of the text with zero results does not appear in the Frequency Distribution Report. To show all hits, adjust report preferences.

  1. Right-click > Frequency Distribution Preferences.
  2. Check the box next to Display all entries (including those with no hits).
  3. Click OK.
Expand references to lower levels

View a more detailed report by expanding lower levels. Click the + button next to any reference level to analyze its lower levels.

To display all references at a specific level, right-click > Show Levels > Select a level.

Note: Showing all levels for books with thousands of sections may cause the program to become non-responsive.