The operator ! requires that a term not appear in the statement results. The ! operator must immediately precede the query term, with no intervening white space, and there must be white space before the ! operator, as in
clubs !book
Because ATG Search applies morphology and term expansion by default, the ! operator applies to the query index term plus all of its expansions. To require a literal term not to appear in the statement results, use the double-quote operator with the ! operator, such as
clubs !"book"
Note: Other search engines use the - operator, but this operator can be mistaken for a hyphen; therefore ATG Search uses the exclamation mark, also a common symbol for a NOT operator.