Language Guide

CHAPTER 5
Objects and References
138 Reference Forms
To get the result, AppleScript first gets the value of the container, which is a list
of two paragraphs:
{"This is paragraph one.", "This is paragraph two."}
AppleScript then gets every word of the resulting list, which results in a list
of two lists:
{{"This", "is", "paragraph", "one"}, ¬
{"This", "is","paragraph", "two"}}
NOTES
If you specify a Range reference as the container for a property or object, as in
font of words 4 thru 6 of document "Mail Form"
the result is a list containing the specified property or object for each object of
the container. The number of items in the list is the same as the number of
objects in the container. For example, the value of the reference in this example
might be
{helvetica, palatino, geneva}
The first item in the list is the font of the fourth word, the second item is the
font of the fifth word, and the third item is the font of the sixth word.
To refer to a contiguous series of characters—instead of a list—when specifying
a range of text objects, use the text element. Text is an element of most text
objects, including all Scriptable Text Editor text objects. Text is also an element
of AppleScript strings.
For example, compare the values of the following references.
words 1 thru 4 of "We're all in this together"
--result: {"We're", "all", "in", "this"}
text from word 1 to word 4 of "We're all in this together"
--result: "We're all in this"