Your teacher asks you to use the web and research on the contemporary American literature, its dominant theme, the prominent figures, the literary style of this period, and literature awards.

It won't be difficult to research on these if the teacher provides you with some materials, but you may find it very challenging when looking for specific details such as the list of National Book Critics Circle Award winners since the year 2000, for example.

It can be very frustrating when you think that you use the right keywords for our search but still you get the results you don't need. If you're searching for a specific search, you should use quotation marks around your phrase.

When you don't use quotation marks...

If you're looking for a specific phrase, for example 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award, typing it into the search engine as is won't probably give you the results you're looking for.

Google or Yahoo might get you web pages that contain all the keywords you entered. However, those keywords most probably won't be in the order you want them to be. They most likely won't be even anywhere near each other.

Consider the following example. Typing Google the words 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award will get you 274,000 results.

These pages include National Book Critics Circle Award, National Book Critics Circle Award nominees in poetry, 2,000 books, 2,000 award winners, critics, circle, book critics, book critics circle...and so on. These results are probably not the ones you're looking for, to say the least.

When you use quotation marks...

Here's one excellent tip when searching the web: use quotation marks around your phrase when you're looking for a specific phrase. Quotation marks solve your problem. Using quotation marks around your phrase is like telling Google or Yahoo or other search engines to get you only pages that contain these keywords exactly how you entered them in - proximity, order, etc.

So typing "2000 National Book Critics Circle Award" will bring back web pages that contain information on 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award contest, 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award winners, 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award nominees, 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award shortlist, 2000 National Book Critics Circle Award categories and other information that you probably need.

Overall, using quotation marks for a specific phrase saves you a great deal of time and headache.