title: Why LIKE without wildcards does not work
body: <p>I might be asking a silly question, but I really need to know. Let's imagine a query like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>c.execute("SELECT * FROM papers WHERE topic_simple LIKE '%monitor%'")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This query will return all the items with <em>monitor</em> in the field topic_simple, including "monitoring", "monitorate", or whatever.</p>
  
  <p>If I do:</p>
  
  <pre><code>c.execute("SELECT * FROM papers WHERE topic_simple LIKE 'monitor'")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The query returns nothing, not even the items with "monitor" (as a simple word) are returned. And that bothers me, I don't understand why.</p>
  
  <p>I use both the sqlite from PyQt and from sqlite3, and I have the same result.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a way to get the items with "monitor" (as a simple word, whith nothing behind or in front of) with a LIKE query ?</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: here is what a typical topic_simple looks like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>we report that a tree like polymer of lysine is able to form a multi ligand complex with a fluorescently labelled peptide leading to the almost complete extinction of the optical signal that can be restored upon the introduction of heparin this simple system allows for the first time the turn on fluorescent sensing of the anticoagulant in human blood at clinically relevant levels monitoring clinical levels of heparin in human blood samples with an indicator displacement assay
  </code></pre>