# What is fuzziness?

### As a search operator

In the main search bar, you can write a query with the search operator tilde (\~) with a number, at the end of each word of your query. You can set fuzziness to 1 or 2. It corresponds to the maximum number of operations (insertions, deletions, substitutions and transpositions) on **characters** needed to make one **term** match the other.

> kitten -> sitten (1 substitution (k turned into s) = fuzziness is 1)

> kitten -> sittin (2 substitutions (k turned into s and e turned into i) = fuzziness is 2)

If you search for similar terms (**to catch typos for example**), use fuzziness. Use the [tilde symbol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde) at the end of the word to set the fuzziness to 1 or 2.

"*The default edit distance is 2, but an edit distance of 1 should be sufficient to catch 80% of all human misspellings. It can be specified as: quikc\~1*" (source: [Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/7.0/query-dsl-query-string-query.html#_fuzziness)).

> Example: quikc\~ brwn\~ foks\~ (as the default edit distance is 2, this query will catch all quick, quack, quock, uqikc, etc. as well as brown, folks, etc.)
>
> Example: Datashare\~1 (this query will catch Datasahre, Dqtashare, etc.)

### In batch searches

When you run a [batch search](https://icij.gitbook.io/datashare/usage/batch-search-documents), you can set the fuzziness to 0, 1 or 2. It is the same as explained above, it will apply to each word in a query and corresponds to the maximum number of operations (insertions, deletions, substitutions and transpositions) on **characters** needed to make one **term** match the other.

> kitten -> sitten (1 substitution (k turned into s) = fuzziness is 1)

> kitten -> sittin (2 substitutions (k turned into s and e turned into i) = fuzziness is 2)

If you search for similar terms (**to catch typos for example**), use fuzziness. Use the [tilde symbol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde) at the end of the word to set the fuzziness to 1 or 2.

"*The default edit distance is 2, but an edit distance of 1 should be sufficient to catch 80% of all human misspellings. It can be specified as: quikc\~1*" (source: [Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/7.0/query-dsl-query-string-query.html#_fuzziness)).

> Example: quikc\~ brwn\~ foks\~ (as the default edit distance is 2, this query will catch all quick, quack, quock, uqikc, etc. as well as brown, folks, etc.)
>
> Example: Datashare\~1 (this query will catch Datasahre, Dqtashare, etc.)