I suspect that it's because the second term is 258 characters.

On Oct 1, 2008, at 3:12 PM, RJay Hansen wrote:

> Using Tex-Edit Plus' "search" command from the Tex-Edit Suite in its  
> AppleScript dictionary, on this paragraph:
>
> "And, as Lantano made his way through the basement, among the cots,  
> stepping over people, their meager stores, saying hello here,  
> smiling to someone there, Nicholas thought, _My god, when he came  
> through the entrance he looked like an old man, weathered, dried- 
> out, but now, closer, Lantano appeared middle-aged; the aura of  
> extreme age had been an illusion due to the scrawny quality of the  
> man and the peculiar stiffness in the way he walked; it was as if he  
> were delicate, feared an injury, a fall._"
>
> If I do this:
>
> tell application "Tex-Edit Plus"
> 	search paragraph 2 of document 1 looking for "My god, when he came  
> through the entrance he looked like an old man, weathered, dried- 
> out, but now, closer, Lantano appeared middle-aged; the aura of  
> extreme age had been an illusion due to the scrawny quality of the  
> man and the peculiar stiffness in the"
> end tell
>
> Tex-Edit selects the string within the paragraph and the script  
> returns "true". However if I add one more word to that search string  
> like so:
>
> tell application "Tex-Edit Plus"
> 	search paragraph 2 of document 1 looking for "My god, when he came  
> through the entrance he looked like an old man, weathered, dried- 
> out, but now, closer, Lantano appeared middle-aged; the aura of  
> extreme age had been an illusion due to the scrawny quality of the  
> man and the peculiar stiffness in the way"
> end tell
>
> I get an error:
>
> Tex-Edit Plus got an error: Can't make some data into the expected  
> type
>
> with "search paragraph 2 of document 1 looking for......etc"  
> highlighted.
>
> Anyone have any ideas what the problem is here? A bug?
>
> Thanks,
>
> RJay