The simplest query one can make to a corpus consists in searching for a word or a short sequence of words. This will typically find the exact wordform(s) you have searched for, and you will be presented with a line of text for each occurrence in the corpus, with the word(s) you searched for in the centre, often highlighted. This is sometimes called the KWiC concordance format (for Key Words in Context).

To get the most out of a concordance, you often need to sort (or order) it.

The output of concordancers can be ordered according to the purpose of your queries. Concordance lines can be sorted by:

• the order of occurrences of the query expression in the corpus - this is the default option in most concordancers; it can be of help if the meaning of your searchword varies from one document to the next.
• the left or right context of the query expression - this is the most widely used sorting option in corpus work, grouping typical collocates of a searchword together to help you spot the patterns of use of a word. Of course, the utility of context sorting depends on the language you work with. For instance, if you were looking for nouns modified by a certain adjective in French, you would sort your concordance to the left as well as to the right, while in English a right-hand sorting would normally be sufficient.
• the searchword itself (sometimes this is called "sorting by the node") - while this ordering is meaningless when you search for a single form, it can be useful when you search for a lemma and want to group its different forms together.