Thanks, Kat. That sounds counterintuitive to me -- to type in the two key words without the quotations or something else. I'd've thunk that'd get me everything about harelips or women named Prudence.

(BTW, trying to think of the name of that novel, which was done as a two-part movie on PBS a few years ago, has been driving me nuts. I thought it was by Thomas Hardy or George Elliot, but found it wasn't, and I could not for the life of me recallt he title, though I remembered the story pretty well.)

Joe, I'm not sure how your method works. When I type in exact whole phrases, I get sent to lots of places that aren't anywhere near exact. E.g., I was looking for the phrase "your umbrella" on Jeeves and on google, and I got to sent to everything that had anything to do with umbrellas. I'll try to look up those instructions, but I'm still kinda baffled.

As for leaving out the "and" and "the," I can see that when looking for general things, but if you are seeking a specific phrase, say, in a poem, leaving out those little words can let in a lot of similar, but wrong, possibilities. "The horse and the fly" is not the same thing as "horse fly," and neither one has anything to do with "flying horses."


Often, when looking for a specific song or poem, I'd rather have the seach turn up nothing than have it make me wade through tons of stuff that happens to contain PART of the phrase or title I'm looking for. I do make it specific when I can and seldom type in more than 3-to-5 words at a time, but the quotes don't have the effect of keeping the words within th quotes together.

Genie