Proximity (Adjacency) Searching vs Phrase Searching When you're searching literature databases you might want to find a phrase. The easiest way to do this is to put the phrase in "speech marks". E.g. "heart disease" This will find that exact phrase - with the words next to each other in that order. BUT... You may be interested in variations on that phrase e.g. heart disease, disease of the heart, diseases of the heart, diseases of the human heart. In that case it might be better to use a proximity/adjacency search - this allows you to find one keyword next to another. Or one keyword within a specified number of words of the other keyword. When using a proximity search the keywords can be in any order. Different Databases Use Different Proximity Operators In Ovid Medline : heart adj disease finds the word heart next to the word disease, in that order. (This is the same as searching for the phrase, of course) heart adj2 disease fin