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KeyPoints Federal
A Legal Research Newsletter for Federal Government from West
September 2007

Stop: Words That Are Too Common to Be Used in a Search

Words that are too common to be used in a Terms and Connectors query on Westlaw are called stop words. These are words such as by, before, now, and the. You can include these common words (except the) in your Terms and Connectors queries if they are either the first or last word in a legal term of art by hyphenating the phrase or enclosing the phrase in quotation marks, e.g.,
law +1 "of the case"
For a complete list of the stop words on Westlaw, click Help at the top of any page. Type stop in the text box at the top of the dialog box and click Search. Then click What are 'stop words' on Westlaw?