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Using the Search Function:

If you are looking for less common words, you can make use of search engines provided to help locate information on particular topics. These will help you locate texts that contain the words you are looking for, and then you can use the FIND function to locate the word within the text. Below is an example of this kind of search -- an "exotic" Grammar Safari:

WebCrawler, like other WWW search tools is designed for finding information about specific topics. For this reason, it will not give us any results if we search for common structures like prepositions, articles, helping verbs, etc. For these types of searches, you should try Hunting Common Structures on the WWW. We can, however, use tools like the World Wide Web Crawler which search the content of documents on the WWW to find examples of less common (or "exotic") grammatical structures. This is an example of a search for the use of the transition nevertheless.

1. Enter the word nevertheless in the white box at the top of the page.

2. You will get many types of entries, from bands with the name nevertheless to a definition and usage of the word. Read the information for each link carefully before you click on it.

3. Once you click on a link in the list, you go to a WWW document which should contain one or more examples of nevertheless. The use of nevertheless may be easy to find, but if it is not, we can use the Find function under the edit menu.

4. If this is an instance of the use of nevertheless that we would like to "collect," we can do so by opening a word processor, using the cursor to highlight the selection we want to make in the WWW document (be sure to include enough context!), and then copying it by selecting "copy" from the "edit" menu at the top of the screen. Go to your word processor document and select "paste" from the word processor's "edit" menu at the top of the screen.

5. You will notice that the formatting is not perfect due to the placement of "carriage returns." To correct this, you can delete the extra returns from the ends of the short lines so that your entry looks like this. Also, notice that you should be sure to include the source of where you found your example!

To begin a search, return to the Grammar Safari page.