Take the 2-minute tour ×  In Apple apps with a search feature,
how do I only search for one letter?  Let's say I'm reading a
math paper, but forgot what the variable "s" meant. In
Windows/Linux apps I could just include spaces in my search (" s
") and it found all instances of the lone letter "s". This does
not work with my Apple apps and a search for " s " returns all
occurrences of the letter "s", ignoring whether the "s" is part
of a word or not.   Ps. the specific program I'm using is
"Preview".  share|improve this question Adding spaces around the
search phrase should work in most applications, but Preview
supports fuzzy searching in the contents of PDFs and overrides
the standard behavior. Double quotes would be interpreted as the
literal characters in other applications like TextEdit. –  ؘؘؘؘ
Sep 5 '12 at 9:29  1 Answer 1  up vote 4 down vote accepted  You
quote your search string (put the quotes in the query)  " s "
to force Preview to match the exact query  share|improve this
answer Wonderful. Would