Show all the occurrences of a word or phrase, along with some context before and after.
Change how the search phrase works.
Use a case-sensitive search to match words only in their exact case, for example, to match "LORD" but not match "Lord" or "lord." Otherwise, searching for "lord" will match all three. (Regardless of this option, results always show in mixed case.)
Use a Tagged search to match words only when used as the entered grammatical part-of-speech. For example, NN is the tag for a noun, so searching for "leave/nn" matches the word "leave" but only when used as a noun. VB is a verb, so "leave/vb" matches only the verb form. Refer to the POS Tags page to become familiar with all the tags, and read the help on that page to learn more about Bible tagging. Either the word or the tag may be an asterisk (*) character to match any word for the entered tag or any tag for the entered word.
Use a Tags Only search to find phrases that match the entered tag sequence. For example, "dt jjs nn" matches all three-word phrases that are a determiner (DT) followed by a superlative adjective (JJS) followed by a common noun (NN).
Use an Untagged search to just enter Bible words and not be concerned with part-of-speech. This is the default.
Limit results to matches in the selected books, or choose "All Books" to show every match in the Bible. To select every book between two books hold down the Shift key when you select the second book. For example, to select all new testament books first click "Mt" to select Matthew, then shift-click "Re" to select Revelation and all books in between. The same technique works for deselecting a range of books.
The default of "Full" gives the most complete set of results, but for searches that match a large number of occurrences full results can take a long time to get from the backend and can slow your browser after you get them. For very large sets the backend will refuse to send full results. For example, searching for all occurrences of the word "the" gives over 64,000 matches, and that many full results can't be delivered from the backend.
"Count Only" shows you how many times the search phrase matches but doesn't show each occurrence. This is usually quite fast on the backend, even for searches that match tens of thousands of times. "Count/Graph" is only slightly slower than this and also allows you to visualize how the matches are spread out through the Bible. Depending on how powerful your device is, though, generating the graph might be slow. (Since graphs are generated by your browser and not by the backend, your account balance never goes down during graphing, no matter how long it takes.)
Change how full results look.
Self-pronouncing results show pronunciation marks on all proper names, and on a few other words. The system of marking was given by Henry Redpath in The Oxford self-pronouncing Bible of 1897 and is described in his prefatory note to the self-pronouncing Bible.
Tagged results show the grammatical part-of-speech of each word. See the discussion above on how to use tags in the search phrase, and keep in mind that deciding to show tags in the results is separate from deciding to use tags in the search phrase.
Editable Tags let you change a word's POS tag. This works only if the search phrase is a single word. After showing the concordance results click anywhere in the result line to highlight the search word and its tag, and then click again directly into the tag to edit it. Choices show as you type, and you can click on a choice to select it or type the full tag. When you're done editing press ENTER or just click out of the occurrence to save your change. To undo your unsaved edits while you're typing press ESCAPE. You can change a tag only to another recognized tag (i.e., you can't invent new tags), and if you click out after entering an unrecognized tag then it automatically reverts and no change is saved.
Untagged results just show Bible words and don't include any part-of-speech tags. This is the default.
Normally each result line is about two hundred fifty characters wide to show plenty of context around the search phrase, but you can show a shorter line. Shorter lines can be especially useful if you select "Inline" to view each result on its own line. Unless you use a wide screen (or a small font size) full-length results viewed inline end up scrolling horizontally, which can be annoying. It's also possible that if your search returns thousands of results that the total size will exceed the backend's limit, and in this case the same search with a smaller line width might work. (If all you want to do is count how many times your search phrase occurs it's faster to use the "Count Only" result type described above.
Use an asterisk (*) character to match any word. For example searching for "a * man" will show "a young man," "a just man," "a hairy man," etc. Asterisks at the beginning or at the end of the phrase are ignored.
Use a tilde (~) character for multiple searches at once with combined results. A Replacement Words field shows and each word you enter there is substituted for the tilde and the results show all matching occurrences. For example, use the search phrase "a ~ man" and replacement words "wise foolish" to show all occurrences of either "a wise man" or "a foolish man." (You'll see this happen in the Common Contexts page when you show occurrences of a list of words used in a given context.)
Use up to five "~" placeholders and each one gets its own list of replacement words. All the first words from each list are put into their placeholders to make the first search phrase, then all the second words are put in to make the second search phrase, and so on.
Use a caret (^) character at the beginning of a word to match any word but that word. For example "a ^wise man" will match "a young man," "a just man," "a hairy man," etc., but won't match "a wise man." When entering POS tags in your search either the word or the tag can be negated, but not both.
Select "Graph" to visualize how your search phrase is spread throughout the Bible. Mouse over or click on a data point for details on that occurrence. Select from the "Book Rules" to add dividers to the graph, then mouse over or click on a divider's label for counts and percentages for that division. Select "Graph Pop Out" to remove the graph from the results panel and make it bigger.
As discussed above under the "Result Type" section, graphing large result sets can slow your device. Keep in mind that each time you add or remove a ruler or pop the graph in or out, you trigger graphing again. You might also trigger it by changing the width of your browser window or by rotating your phone. Although very large result sets can take a long time to generate their initial graph, adjustments to an existing graph, for example adding or removing rulers, goes a lot faster. Also, graphs are always generated by your browser and not by the backend, so graphing doesn't affect your account balance.
Click in the "Occurrences" area to bring up the chapter of the clicked-on occurrence. From the chapter you can browse to other chapters and books, and take notes on books, chapters, and verses, as you can from the Chapters page. See the help on that page for how to do that.
If you're editing POS tags, as described above under the Full Results Options section, then clicking on an occurrence doesn't automatically open the chapters panel. If the chapters panel is already open then the chapter is loaded into it, but otherwise it doesn't open, helping you focus on your tag edits.