Thank you to those who have tried to educate me on the use of the word "split" in GnuCash, but whilst I believe that I understand how it is being used, the reason for using such an ambiguous term remains puzzling when better alternatives exist. I have a piece of wood that has a split in it caused by uneven shrinkage. It is one piece of wood with one split. If I choose to propagate that split by forcing a wedge or axe into it, I end up with two pieces of wood and the split suddenly disappears. The split has not magically turned into two splits and if I plane the edges of the two pieces of wood there will be no evidence that the split ever existed. I understand that GnuCash has been developed on the basis of double entry bookkeeping, which I believe gets its name from the fact that the details of every transaction are entered at least twice; I regard this as duplicated entry rather than split entry. For a simple transaction there is no splitting involved; all of the money passes from one account to another and is simply recorded in both accounts. The only transactions involving splits are those where a sum of money leaves the source account and is shared between two (or more) destination accounts or where the money from two (or more) source accounts passes to one destination account; these could truthfully be thought of as a split transactions or compound transactions. Most confusion arises from using the word "split" to describe every ledger entry, regardless of whether any splitting has been done. Using the term "ledger entry" or simply "entry" to describe the constituent parts of a transaction works consistently, whereas using the term "split" to describe the same thing does not. The term "double entry bookkeeping" makes sense, whereas the term "double split bookkeeping" does not, but that is how GnuCash appears to be defined. Despite my comments above, I do like using GnuCash and appreciate the efforts made by its developers, but whenever I try to encourage others to use it, the perceived steep learning curve is the first concern and the use of confusing terminology doesn't help. Kind regards, Alan
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