A section is a collection of contiguous pages within a document that its main text flow enabled (sometimes referred to as being in “word-processing mode”). When a document’s body text is enabled, the document body checkbox, located in the Document Tab of the Document Pane in the document window, will be selected.  1 

Functionally, sections act as wrappers for pages, providing a means of identifying the pages for access and manipulation. Although pages can be added to sections using the make verb, it is better to rely upon the built-in auto-flow mechanism of Pages to add pages as needed.

Here is the dictionary excerpt for the section class:

The Section Class

Script Examples

DO THIS ►For use with the examples scripts, DOWNLOAD a ZIP archive of a Pages document containing the text of Alice in Wonderland, with each chapter as its own section.

(A special “thank you” to Project Gutenberg for making this content available to the public!)

Here’s a simple script showing the relationship between sections and pages:

Counting Pages in Sections
Open in AppleScript Editor
01		tell application "Pages"
02		activate
03		tell the front document
04		get the count of sections
05		--> 12
06
07		get the count of pages of the first section
08		--> 5
09
10		get the count of pages of every section
11		--> 64
12		end tell
13		end tell

Because body text is a property of a document, of a section, and of a page, it can used to target specific parts of a document, such as a specific section, a specific page, and even a specific paragraph:

Formatting Body Text
Open in AppleScript Editor
01		tell application "Pages"
02		activate
03		-- if there is no open document then stop the script
04		if not (exists document 1) then error number -128
05
06		tell the front document
07		-- stop if the document does not contain a default text flow
08		if document body is false then error number -128
09
10		-- CHANGE PROPERTIES OF THE DOCUMENT TEXT
11		tell body text
12		set the font to "Verdana"
13		end tell
14
15		-- CHANGE THE PROPERTIES OF THE TEXT OF EVERY SECTION
16		tell body text of every section
17		set the size to 12
18		set the color of it to {13107, 13107, 13107}
19		-- set the properties of the 1st paragraph of every section
20		tell its first paragraph
21		set the font to "Times New Roman Bold"
22		set the size to 18
23		set its color to {0, 0, 0}
24		end tell
25		end tell
26
27		-- CHANGE THE PROPERTIES OF THE TEXT OF THE LAST PAGE OF a SECTION
28		set the sectionCount to the count of sections
29		repeat with i from the sectionCount to 1 by -1
30		if i is sectionCount then
31		set the color of the body text of the last page to {65535, 0, 0}
32		else
33		tell section i of it
34		tell body text of the last page
35		set the color of it to {65535, 0, 0}
36		end tell
37		end tell
38		end if
39		end repeat
40		end tell
41
42		-- notify the user
43		display notification "Section formating completed." with title "Pages AppleScript"
44		end tell