THE LEDGER 19 



those items sufficient to make the entry clear. Illustra- 

 tion 5 shows an account called Mr. Arnold's Capital. 



Ledger. The book in which the accounts of a business 

 are kept is called a ledger. The ledger is ruled in such a 

 way as to permit the accounts to be shown according to 

 the principles stated above. It is divided into two parts 

 by a perpendicular line. A column in which to express 

 values in dollars and cents is provided at the extreme right 

 of each half of the page. Date columns, explanation col- 

 umns and reference columns are also provided in the usual 

 ledger page. One or more pages of the ledger may be re- 

 served for each account; or more than one account may 

 be placed on a single page. Entries in the ledger should 

 be made in ink, the term " entry" meaning the recording 

 of debits and credits for a transaction. 



Accounts Illustrated. The point has now been reached 

 where an illustration of some of the ledger accounts should 

 be studied. The ledger accounts illustrated on the pages 

 immediately following have been created from the series 

 of transactions of Mr. Arnold given on pages 14 and 15. 

 The accounts also illustrate some of the universal bookkeep- 

 ing abbreviations in use, and illustrate the second of the 

 three methods of recording transactions referred to at 

 the beginning of this chapter, namely, recording them in 

 the ledger accounts direct. 



Unless these abbreviations are studied and fixed logi- 

 cally in mind one cannot expect to be able to create ledger 

 accounts intelligently from business transactions. An ef- 

 fort should be made to trace each transaction into the ac- 

 counts, remembering that each one is shown in its twofold 

 effect upon the values of the business. In other words, 

 each transaction has an entry on the left side of one ac- 

 count and on the right side of another account. The dates 

 can be used advantageously in tracing the transactions into 

 the accounts. 



