# Searching for a three letter word.... **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [March 22, 2003, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-a-three-letter-word/163409 "2003-03-22T19:26:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2003, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-a-three-letter-word/163409/1 "2003-03-22T19:26:49Z")
From the FAQ > [@](#): > > Q: Why won’t the software allow me to search for a three-letter word? > A: The minimum word length for the search index is four characters. Making the minimum word length three characters would cause the index to become too large to be efficient on our current server. Customizing the search index to (e.g.) only index certain three-letter words, or index those words only in thread titles, would require “hacking” the vBulletin software, and we don’t “hack” the software because if we did we would no longer be supported by vBulletin. I don’t usually use the search function, but I just watched the movie _One Hour Photo_ last night and I wanted to see what people on the boards might have said about it. So I went to the search page and searched for “One hour photo” in Cafe Sociey over the past 6 months, and got a lot of hits for the movie I was looking for, but _also_ for the word “one”. Admiteddly, all of these hits seem to be in a thread where the phrase “one hour photo” was also found, but the word “one” is highlighted alone as well. Is there some explanation for this? Can 3-letter words be found by Search if they are part of a phrase? I’m confused! Example: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=147988&highlight=one+hour+photo](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=147988&highlight=one+hour+photo) ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2003, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-a-three-letter-word/163409/2 "2003-03-22T19:57:42Z")
IIRC, it was Arnold who explained this to me. The 3-letter word was ignored in the actual search, but all the words in the search phrase were highlighted. If you search on “hour photo”, you should get the same results. ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2003, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-a-three-letter-word/163409/3 "2003-03-22T21:05:23Z")
Oh, that makes sense. Like I said, I don’t usually use the search function, so it never even occured to me to try a different search to compare results. I just thought it was odd and the FAQ didn’t cover it (at least not in my quick perusal of it). Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2003, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-a-three-letter-word/163409/4 "2003-03-22T21:36:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rowrrbazzle \* > If you search on “hour photo”, you should get the same results. [nitpick] You should get the same _posts,_ but not the same _results,_ since “one” will not be highlighted. [/nitpick] It seems the search function and the highlight function are not well-coordinated in vB. Typical programming error. ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2003, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-a-three-letter-word/163409/5 "2003-03-23T02:27:59Z")
You can tell it to highlight anything you want manually, with some interesting results sometimes. Here’s a link to this thread with a lot of common words ( as well as this entire phrase ) highlighted: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=171816&highlight=i+the+of+and+a+to+in+is+you+that+it+as+well+this+entire+phrase](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=171816&highlight=i+the+of+and+a+to+in+is+you+that+it+as+well+this+entire+phrase) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-a-three-letter-word/163409/6 "2003-03-24T02:34:12Z")
I’m tempted to start appending “highlight=red” to every link I post :D. But I imagine that wouldn’t be a good idea? Does it cost the server any more to deliver a page with highlights than one without? How much more? Is it worth worrying about? ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2003, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/searching-for-a-three-letter-word/163409/7 "2003-03-24T02:51:30Z")
I don’t know. I wonder too. I have been conscientious about removing the highlighted words from my search results. This has little to do with bandwidth considerations on my part, though, and more to do with the fact that if people know exactly what I searched for, they could probably figure out some unpleasant things about my psyche. I always find it interesting finding out what words different people remember from threads, by seeing what they searched for. 🙂