When I was preparing for my webinar a couple of weeks ago, I learned something: some wildcards are even wilder than I thought!

The webinar, titled Looking for Validation: Evaluating Methods for Review in eDiscovery Today and hosted by eDiscovery Today, was conducted on September 18th and is available for on-demand viewing on our YouTube channel here.

One of the examples I discussed was the Bancpass case, which is a case I covered in my blogging a few years ago. Part of the dispute in the case had to do with the plaintiff’s smartphone app and one of the things notable about this case is that the ruling included the search terms agreed to by the parties.  Two of those terms were as follows:

• Smartphone /10 app!
• Phone! /10 app!

The “!” symbol is the wildcard character in this case and the “/10” means “within 10 words of”.  Clearly, it looked like the parties chose to add a wildcard to “app” to search for “app”, “apps”, “application” or “applications”.  Makes sense, right?

Not when you realize how many words there are in the English language that start with “app”. To demonstrate how many, I’ve historically used a site called “Morewords” to illustrate how many words in the English language begin with “app”. According to “Morewords”, there are actually 306 words in the English language that start with “app”. Apparently, it appears the application of the wildcard was appealing when it wasn’t approximate or even appropriate, it was appalling. See what I did there? 😉

I’ve been using that example for years.

But in preparing for this webinar, it seemed that “Morewords” has gotten a bit glitchy and sketchy, so I looked for another site. And what site did I find?

Only, the dictionary we’ve trusted for over two centuries! The online Merriam Webster dictionary provides the ability to perform starts with and ends with searches to see what a wildcard might retrieve and avoid using those wildcards that are overinclusive or underinclusive. Here’s an example of this site using the “app” example above (also linked here):

Notice anything different? The online Merriam Webster dictionary doesn’t have 306 words that begin with “app” – it has 449 words! That’s nearly 50% more words than “Morewords” (go figure!). So, over the years I’ve been using this example, I’ve been understating the number of words significantly. Wow.

It’s a good thing I found this site – after all, you don’t want to retrieve a message that says “I rode an Appaloosa in the Appalachians” when you’re looking for phone apps, right? 😉

Regardless, for this case, a very simple web search that would have taken less than 10 seconds to type out here could have saved hours and hours of effort in the Bancpass case. What I didn’t realize until a couple of weeks ago is just how much potential work that could be! Some wildcards are even wilder than I thought!

So, what do you think? Are you surprised that wildcards can be even wilder? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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