![]() ![]() credits are “good” because they add to one’s account or worth (e.g. ![]() Students come to accounting having already acquired (or suffered) experience with bank statements and credit card receipts and other everyday exposure to the terms “debit” and “credit.” Quite naturally, they assume that the same characteristics which debits and credits possess in those limited situations will apply in all accounting transactions - viz. One of the first obstacles in learning (or teaching, as I discovered later) the basics of accounting is the need to dispel the notion of “bad” debits or “good” credits. I genuinely enjoyed this introduction to accounting EXCEPT for one thing - Where’s the “r” in debit? Debit Accounts Receivable, credit Sales Revenue debit Cash, credit Accounts Receivable debit Accounts Payable, credit Gash and so on. Even journal entries made sense to me almost from the start. It appealed to my sense of order by its ability to organize and summarize diverse and seemingly chaotic transactions. At an accelerated pace, meeting three hours a day, four days a week, we flew through ledger accounts, journal entries, financial statement preparation - and accounting struck a chord in me. ![]() And the abbreviation for “debtor” is “Dr.”Īs a liberal arts undergraduate, I spent part of the summer of my sophomore year enrolled in an introductory accounting course at the University of Pennsylvania’s highly regarded Wharton School. They were used to record the debts of the merchant or businessman. Originally, “debits” did have a “bad” side. Whereas the accounting “debit” is now viewed as a “technical” term, devoid of any value considerations, referring simply to the left side of a journal entry or ledger account, this was not always the case. An investigation of the history and evolution of the “debit” in bookkeeping reveals the reason for the abbreviation-a reason almost totally lost without historical perspective. Abstract: The common abbreviation for the accounting term “debit” is a puzzling one-”Dr.” Today, particularly with our depersonalized treatment of the accounting or bookkeeping “debit,” there is no obvious clue as to why there is an “r” in “debit” at all. ![]()
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