"ww" means "whole word."
If you entered a search term like friend[/b] and did not set "ww", it would return records with
friend
friendly
friendship
unfriendly
If you did set the "ww" it would only return records with the word
friend
"ma" means "Match any"
If you entered friend[/b] in one search field and Kansas[/b] in another search field, and did not set "ma" you would only get records that had both of those entries in those fields.
If you did set "ma" you would get all records with either "friend" or "Kansas" in their fields.
Does this help?
JPD