13.1. Understanding the a reference to Operator

The a reference to operator allows you to turn a reference literal into a reference object that can be assigned to variables and passed to and from handlers just like any other AppleScript object.

What do I mean by this? Well, as we discussed in Chapter 12, when AppleScript evaluates a literal reference that isn't the target of a tell block or a parameter to a particular command, it normally sends an implicit get command to retrieve the value from the specified location: