This publication explores the journey from characters to words to phrases, and ultimately to meaning. As you join me along this journey, I hope you’ll come to appreciate the key role that query understanding plays in the search process. If you’re a software engineer, data scientist, or product manager working on a search engine, I encourage you to use what you learn to improve your searchers’ experience. If you’re not looking for a particular topic, I recommend that you start with the introduction: https://queryunderstanding.com/introduction-c98740502103