Since many words have multiple forms, databases provide a tool called truncation. This allows you to search for all forms of a word at once. Notice that all of the words below can be shortened to the "root" they have in common. If you shorten a word in this way and add a truncation symbol (in Academic OneFile and many other databases the truncation symbol is an asterisk) you force the database to search for and retrieve all forms of a word at once.
What if your concept must be expressed in more than one word? Simply put that phrase in quotes, i.e., "No child left behind." Doing this will ensure that your results contain those four words, in that exact order.
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