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Words Ignored by AgeLine (Stop Words)


Some words appear so frequently in the English language that they have too little meaning to be helpful search terms. Called stop words, they are ignored by the search engine in many of the AgeLine search boxes. Certain words related to the older population also appear so frequently in AgeLine that they too are ignored in many of the search boxes.

Prepositions and Articles

The following prepositions and articles are ignored in search boxes in the Basic Search and the Advanced Search, and also in the Title and Any Word search boxes on the Multiple-Options Search screen.

a, an, and, are, as, at,
be, but, by, for, from,
had, have, is, it, of, on,
that, the, this, to, was,
which, with


But the words above are not ignored in the Journal Title, Author, and Subject Search Boxes on the Multiple-Options and Advanced Subject Search screens.

Words Related to Older Adults

The following words related to the older population are ignored in the Basic Search and the Advanced Search, and also in the Any Word search box on the Multiple-Options Search screen. Thus, in those boxes, searching on one of the age-related terms below will not retrieve any items unless you include it with other words in a phrase.

older, elderly (but not
elder), aged (but not
aging), adults (but not
adult), senior, seniors

These age-related words are not ignored in the Title, Journal Title, Author, and Subject search boxes on the Multiple-Options and Advanced Subject Search screens.


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