Efficient research is critical to solid writing. The blog Dumb Little Man has a useful post on using Google more efficiently. Even when you aren’t writing a “research” essay, do a quick survey of the Internet just to see what other people have written on your topic. Heaven forbid, you might even find out you were wrong.

Here are a few of their tips:

• Use the “not” operator (“-”) to weed out irrelevant returns. Suppose you wanted to do an image search for white stripes, but didn’t want pictures of Jack White. An search for “white stripes -music -jack -meg -band” will get you at least a few pictures unrelated to the band.
• Use the “define:” operator to define terms quickly. Whether you don’t know the word at all, or just want to check your hunch, Google puts the definition right at your fingertips.
• Use the “site:” operator to search within a site. Many sites have their own search bars, but they can be slow or inconsistent.