PHP/MySQL - include plurals but exclude singulars

Question

I am building a site with a requirement to include plural words but exclude singlular words, as well as include longer phrases but exclude shorter phrases found within it.

Answer 1

You should consider using FULL TEXT SEARCH.

This will solve your Bread/read issue.

I believe use of wildcards here isn't useful. Lets say you are using '%read%', now this would also return bread, breads etc, which is why I recommended Full Text Search