Managing Word Form Variation of Text Retrieval in Practice - why Five Character Truncation Takes it all?

This paper discusses different methods that have been used for management of word form variation in information retrieval during the history of textual information retrieval. The techniques have been characterized in many ways during the history of IR. We pinpoint the most meaningful features of the approaches and make comparisons that have practical value. In the discussion we characterize word form variation management methods in different ways and offer the reader an overall practical guide for choosing between different methods to be used.