A client was trying to sort out how to run a specific search. They wanted to use a phrase with the word and – they were getting anomalous results and so dropped us a question. Anytime you need to use a primary operator in a search you need to append a tilde (~) to the search operator.

I am reluctant to share their specific search. I was looking at some audit proposals for the ratification of the Independent Registered Accounting firm and so that is where this example comes from. Suppose you want to search for cases where the proxy reports that the auditor is not expected to be present at the annual meeting. NOT is a search operator and it is a strong one – it will eliminate documents/results with the word/phrase that follow. (It has more complicated uses but let me avoid a rabbit hole here).

To identify those documents where there is an explicit indication that the auditor is not expected to be present at the meeting I ran the following search:

((not~ expected) w/10 present) w/50 (audit* or account*)

If we run the search without the tilde – the result would be those cases where the word expected was not within 10 words of the word present and expected was within 50 words of words rooted on audit or account. Are you confused, sometimes I am to – search is an art.

I will admit, I find these results interesting – there are not that many though and it seems that a good number of the cases are those where the auditor from the prior year is not continuing – but not all. The image above came from Forward Air’s 2021 DEF 14A.

Of course, I immediately wondered if those cases were indication of an intent to dismiss the auditing firm in the near future. Unfortunately when I expanded my search to cover all years I find cases where the auditor is routinely not expected to be present. For example CECO ENVIRONMENTAL, CULLEN FROST BANKERS and DOVER CORP. Shucks, I thought that would be an interesting research paper.