ENGL 100 - Expository Writing

When you use Google to find information, you type in words or phrases that convey the most important aspects of what you are searching for. These are called keywords, or search terms. 

For example, if you were searching for information on the deforestation of gorilla habitat in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, you might type into Google:

"Gorilla," "habitat," and "Congo" are examples of keywords. 

You should also use keywords when searching library databases and other resources. They will help you find the best materials, and save you time as you search. 

Exploratory essay

For the exploratory essay, you should select keywords that describe the themes within the larger socioeconomic issue at hand.

For instance, if you were interested in the larger theme of education, and had narrowed it down to finding information about how food insecurity affects graduation rates for college students, you might try searching:

This example shows a search in our Search It tool on the libraries' website.

Community informative report

Selecting keywords for the community informative report can be a challenge as community groups can be hyper-localized. The trick is to think of these groups more broadly. 

For example, if your community group is a local knitting club, try using keywords like:

This searches for "knitting stereotypes" and "knitting culture" at the same time. This type of search yields lots of results so to narrow it, you can also search for those concepts separately. 

Keywords can also come about after you do the interview.  

Informative report

Selecting keywords for the informative report is a similar process to selecting keywords for the exploratory essay. As you think about the broader issue of racial inequality in the U.S., you'll want to spend some time thinking about how you can narrow that down into something manageable and that interests you.

For example, maybe you're interested in how racial disparities persist in U.S. jails despite people of color making up a smaller percentage of the population. Your search might look like this:

From your results, you might discover other avenues that could shape your informative report such as mental health during and after incarceration or even how incarceration affects the overall health and development of children with parents in prison. 

Advice on Synonyms:

• Synonyms make your list of keywords longer
• More keywords = better searching = more results

Not all of the results you get from synonym searching will be directly related to your topic. Look at the example to the right to get an idea of how synonyms can broaden your understanding of a given concept.  

Key Points:

• Make lists of keywords for the main concepts of your research topic
• Use single words or simple phrases
• Be prepared that this may all change as you learn more information
• Be flexible
• Use a thesaurus to help generate synonyms

This video shows a student brainstorming keywords for their topic. It's a useful exercise to watch as it shows how to cluster keywords into groups, and then from those groups, come up with synonyms and related words.