Inside Macintosh: AppleScript Language Guide / Part 1 - Introducing AppleScript

Chapter 2 - Overview of AppleScript / Other Features and Language Elements

Continuation Characters

A simple AppleScript statement must normally be on a single line. If a statement is longer than will fit on one line, you can extend it by including a continuation character, ¬ (Option-L or Option-Return), at the end of one line and continuing the statement on the next. For example, the statement

delete word 1 of paragraph 3 of document "Learning AppleScript"

can appear on two lines:

delete word 1 of paragraph 3 of document ¬
   "Learning AppleScript"

The only place a continuation character does not work is within a string. For example, the following statement causes an error, because AppleScript interprets the two lines as separate statements.

--this statement causes an error:
delete word 1 of paragraph 3 of document "Fundamentals Â
	of Programming"

Note

The characters -- in the example indicate that the first line is a comment. A comment is text that is ignored by AppleScript when a script is run. Comments are added to help you understand scripts. They are explained in the next section, "Comments."

If a string extends beyond the end of the line, you can continue typing without pressing Return (the text never wraps to the next line), or you can break the string into two or more strings and use the concatenation operator (&) to
join them:

delete word 1 of paragraph 3 of document "Fundamentals " ¬  & 
"of Programming"

For more information about the concatenation operator, see Chapter 6, "Expressions."