1MM: Double Quotes and Negative  Transfer

1MM: Double Quotes and Negative Transfer


I had trouble using double quotes in my search... 

... or, more precisely, it was when I switched OUT of Google to another search application that caused the problems.  

I'd searched for a particular lyric (one I've used before) "When Venus the goddess of beauty and love."  In Google, this works perfectly--I can find the music easily.  

But then, once I'd switched back to my laptop I used Apple's Spotlight search utility to find a copy of the song lyrics that I knew I had on my hard drive somewhere. 

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    I tried and tried.. and failed.  Trust me, I'm 100% sure I've got a copy--the question is Why can't I find them? 

    I thought that perhaps the index for the Spotlight system was broken, but no--after a few moments I figured out that it was user error.  I'd been entering the same query complete with the quote marks: 

         [ "when Venus the goddess of beauty and love" ] 

    And THAT wasn't working.  

    Luckily, I figured out quickly that Spotlight searches for whatever you enter, including the quote marks.  So, to make it work, I had to NOT use the double quotes!  

    Fine.  

    It means that I have to know the particular details of each search / find engine I use!  It's not an onerous burden, but you need to know, if you're going to use these tools well.  

    This impressed me so much that I made a short video about it... Here you go...  



    Hope you find this one useful!  

    Search on!