AppleScript: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

Multiple-Word Terms

Many terms, especially commands in scripting additions, consist of multiple words . An example frequently used in this book is display dialog. You might think that such a term would present extra challenges for resolution, but in actual fact just the opposite appears to be the case; multiple-word terms are a good thing:

You can't make one

Terms that you create in a script can't contain spaces unless surrounded by pipes—and pipes mean that no dictionary will be consulted. Therefore the probability of your creating a term in a script that clashes with a dictionary-based multiple-word term is zero.

Clash is improbable

The more words a term consists of, the more likely it is that this term is unique among all dictionaries. This is especially important with scripting additions, whose terms are globally visible; for this reason, well-behaved scripting additions tend to use multiple-word commands.

There is no clash with single-word terms

This is the really surprising part. Consider, for example, the scripting addition command set the clipboard to. Even though set...to is a command, and the is usually ignored, and clipboard could be a variable name (and is in fact a property defined by AppleScript), no confusion arises:

local clipboard, tester
set clipboard to "Mannie" -- sets the variable clipboard
set the tester to "Moe" -- sets the variable tester (ignoring "the")
set the clipboard to "Jack" --sets the system scrap

Though I don't know the details, a natural explanation ...