Hi Will,
Not to worry, as I and others who post the replies here, know a great deal
about SQL Full-text Search (FTS ;-)
Could you post the output of the following SQL script that will provide info
on your SQL Server and OS platform?

use master
go
SELECT @@language
SELECT @@version
go

If I correctly understand your requirement, you want a range of words, plus
and minus distance from the search word. Correct?
Assuming so, then using a table (pub_info) in the Pubs database that is
already FT-enabled on the TEXT column (pr_info), you could use the following
SQL code to get the results you want:

-- The following SQL FTS query on the pubs table pub_info will return rows
that match the FTS search word (books)
-- and the near by words from 20 characters before to 100 characters after
the searched keyword(books).

SELECT pub_id, SubString(pr_info,PatIndex ('%books%',pr_info)-20,100)
FROM pub_info
 WHERE Contains(pr_info, 'books')

/* returns the following results:
pub_id
------ ---------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------
9952   t data for Scootney Books, publisher 9952 in the pubs database.
Scootney Books is located in New Yor
0736   t data for New Moon Books, publisher 0736 in the pubs database. New
Moon Books is located in Boston,

(2 row(s) affected)
*/

You can vary the length of the results via the PatIndex parameters.

Hopefully, this is what you're looking for!
Regards,
John