title: Satchel Paige

text: In 1952, Rogers Hornsby took over as manager of the Browns, and despite past accusations of racism, Hornsby was less hesitant to use Paige than Boudreau was four years before. Paige was so effective that when Hornsby was fired by Veeck, his successor Marty Marion seemed not to want to risk going more than three games without using Paige in some form. By July 4, with Paige having worked in 25 games, Casey Stengel named him to the American League All-Star team, making him the first black pitcher on an AL All-Star team. The All-Star game was cut short after five innings due to rain and Paige never got in. Stengel resolved to name him to the team the following year. Paige finished the year 12–10 with a 3.07 ERA for a team that lost ninety games.


title: Satchel Paige

text: Stengel kept his word and named Paige to the 1953 All-Star team despite Paige not having a very good year. Paige ended the year with a disappointing 3–9 record. Paige was released after the season when Veeck sold the Browns.


title: Satchel Paige

text: Paige once again returned to his barnstorming days. Then, on August 14, 1955, Paige signed a contract with the Greensboro Patriots of the Carolina League.


title: Satchel Paige

text: Veeck once again came to Paige's rescue when, after taking control of the Phillies' Triple-A farm team, the Miami Marlins of the International League, he signed Paige to a contract for $15,000 and a percentage of the gate. Paige finished the season 11–4 with an ERA of 1.86 with 79 strikeouts and only 28 walks. This time, when Veeck left the team, Paige was allowed to stay on, for two more years.


title: Satchel Paige

text: In 1957, the Marlins finished in sixth place, but Paige had a 10–8 record with 76 strikeouts versus 11 walks and 2.42 ERA. The following year, Paige finished 10–10, saying that he would not return to Miami in 1959. In 1959, Paige returned to his barnstorm roots and signed a pitching contract with the Havana Cuban Stars who were owned by Dempsey Hovland. Paige was in and out of baseball, pitching sporadically, over the next decade.


title: Satchel Paige

text: At the age of 55, in 1961, Paige signed on with the Triple-A Portland Beavers of the Pacific Coast League, pitching 25 innings, striking out 19 and giving up eight earned runs. He failed to record a single decision in his stint with the Beavers.


title: Satchel Paige

text: In 1965, Kansas City Athletics owner Charles O. Finley signed Paige, 59 at the time, for one game. On September 25, against the Boston Red Sox, Finley invited several Negro league veterans, including Cool Papa Bell, to be introduced before the game. Paige was in the bullpen, sitting on a rocking chair, being served coffee by a "nurse" between innings. He started the game by getting Jim Gosger out on a pop foul. The next man, Dalton Jones, reached first and went to second on an infield error, but was thrown out trying to reach third on a pitch in the dirt. Carl Yastrzemski doubled and Tony Conigliaro hit a fly ball to end the inning. The next six batters went down in order, including a strikeout of Bill Monbouquette. In the fourth inning, Paige took the mound, to be removed according to plan by Haywood Sullivan. He walked off to a standing ovation from the small crowd of 9,289. The lights dimmed and, led by the PA announcer, the fans lit matches and cigarette lighters while singing "The Old Gray Mare".


title: Satchel Paige

text: The spectacle of watching Paige pitch was made all the more entertaining by the expansive pitching repertoire he developed over the years. In his early years, Paige was known as a pure fastball pitcher. He experimented with releasing pitches from a variety of arm angles in that time, something he would build upon later as he added more pitches to the mix. In 1933, while playing integrated baseball in Bismarck, North Dakota, "The Bismarck Tribune" reported that Paige used "a tricky delayed delivery with great effectiveness," something that would later become known as Paige's famous "hesitation pitch".


title: Satchel Paige

text: The idea came to me in a game, when the guy at bat was all tighted up waiting for my fast ball. I knew he'd swing as soon as I just barely moved. So when I stretched, I paused just a little longer with my arms above my head. Then I threw my left foot forward but I didn't come around with my arm right away. I put that foot of mine down, stopping for a second, before the ball left my hand. When my foot hit the ground that boy started swinging, so by the time I came around with the whip he was way off stride and couldn't get anywhere near the ball. I had me a strikeout.


title: Satchel Paige

text: In 1934, before a barnstorming match-up, Dizzy Dean was heard on the radio saying that "Satchel Paige has no clue how to throw a curve." In actuality, Paige had been practicing and perfecting his curveball in secret for many years. When Dean came up to bat, Satchel Paige struck him out with nothing but curveballs—officially adding the pitch to his repertoire. Paige could throw a variety of curveballs at different speeds and arm angles.


title: Satchel Paige

text: In late 1939, after Paige had recovered from the severe arm injury that jeopardized his career, he re-designed his pitching repertoire to take better care of his arm. He still had an exceptional fastball but he did away with his fast curve, deciding to only throw slow curves from that point forward. He learned to throw a knuckleball from Cool Papa Bell, a pitch which he reportedly perfected in regards to its movement but did not always exhibit full control of. He also added a "slow sinker" and used his hesitation pitch more frequently. Along with these additions to his repertoire, Paige made greater use of his sidearm and submarine releases, which both made him a more deceptive pitcher and lessened the strain on his pitching arm.


title: Satchel Paige

text: As Paige got older, he had to rely more and more on his offspeed pitches. By the time he finally got to play in the major leagues, he threw a seemingly endless variety of pitches, all of which moved. He was especially known for his tailing fastball, slow curve, hesitation pitch, a fantastic change-up, and a highly effective eephus pitch. He reportedly could deceive batters by throwing fastballs with a curveball wrist action, and vice versa. Pitching this way allowed Paige to be a highly effective pitcher, even into his fifties.


title: Satchel Paige

text: After the 1957 season, Paige went to the Mexican state of Durango to appear in a United Artists movie, "The Wonderful Country", starring Robert Mitchum and Julie London. Paige played Sgt. Tobe Sutton, a hard-bitten cavalry sergeant of the Buffalo Soldiers.


title: Satchel Paige

text: Late in 1960, Paige began collaborating with writer David Lipman on his autobiography, which was published by Doubleday in April 1962, and ran to three printings.


title: Satchel Paige

text: In 1968, Paige assumed the position of deputy sheriff in Jackson County, Missouri, with the understanding that he need not bother to actually come to work in the sheriff's office. The purpose of the charade was to set up Paige with political credentials. Soon after, he ran for a Missouri state assembly seat with the support of the local Democratic club against incumbent Representative Leon Jordan. Jordan defeated Paige by the margin of 1,870 votes to 382 (83–17%).


title: Satchel Paige

text: In 1968, Paige reached out to all twenty MLB teams at the time to try and join one of them on the active roster in order to reach the 158 days required to qualify for the five-year minimum for the pension. On August 12, Atlanta Braves owner William Bartholomay agreed to sign him as an adviser. On February 26, 1969, the league and the players' association altered the pension requirements, with one of the requirements stating that any player that had played at least four years could qualify for the pension, including players that had played during 1959. At any rate, Paige worked the year as an assistant trainer.


title: Satchel Paige

text: Bowie Kuhn replaced William Eckert as the Commissioner of Baseball in 1969. In the wake of Ted Williams' 1966 Hall of Fame induction speech urging the induction of Negro leaguers, and on the recommendation of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, Kuhn empowered a ten-man committee to sift through hundreds of names and nominate the first group of four Negro league players to go to the Hall of Fame. Because Paige pitched in Greensboro in 1966, he would not have been eligible for enshrinement until 1971, as players have to be out of professional baseball for at least five years before they can be elected. All of the men on the committee agreed that Paige had to be the first Negro league player to get elected. On February 9, 1971, Kuhn announced that Paige would be the first member of the Negro wing of the Hall of Fame. Because many in the press saw the suggestion of a "Negro wing" as separate-but-equal and denounced Major League Baseball for the idea, by the time that Paige's induction came around on August 9, Kuhn convinced the owners and the private trust of the Hall of Fame that there should be no separate wing after all. It was decided that all who had been chosen and all who would be chosen would get their plaques in the "regular" section of the Hall of Fame.


title: Satchel Paige

text: Paige took a job with the Tulsa Oilers minor league team in 1973 as their pitching coach. During the mid-to-late 1970s he finally slowed down his traveling, making only occasional personal appearances at mostly minor league stadiums and banquets.


title: Satchel Paige

text: In 1980, Paige was named vice-president of the Triple-A Springfield Cardinals, although it was mostly an honorary position.


title: Satchel Paige

text: On October 26, 1934, Paige married his longtime girlfriend Janet Howard. They separated a few years later and she served Paige with divorce papers while he was walking onto the field during a game at Wrigley Field. At his court date, on August 4, 1943, Paige's divorce was finalized with him paying a one time payment of $1,500 plus Howard's $300 attorney's fees.


title: Satchel Paige

text: Paige married Lucy Maria Figueroa during his time playing in Puerto Rico in 1940, but because he was not divorced from his first wife, the marriage to Figueroa was not legal.


title: Satchel Paige

text: In 1946 or 1947, Paige married LaHoma Jean Brown. Paige and LaHoma had seven children together; LaHoma also had a daughter from an earlier marriage.


title: Satchel Paige

text: Paige died of a heart attack after a power failure at his home in Kansas City on June 8, 1982. He is buried on Paige Island in the Forest Hill Calvary Cemetery in Kansas City.


title: Satchel Paige

text: In 2010, sportswriter Joe Posnanski, writing for "Sports Illustrated", named Paige as the hardest thrower in the history of baseball. He based this, in part, on the fact that: "Joe DiMaggio would say that Paige was the best he ever faced. Bob Feller would say that Paige was the best he ever saw. Hack Wilson would say that the ball looked like a marble when it crossed the plate. Dizzy Dean would say that Paige's fastball made his own look like a changeup." Posnanski further noted that for most of his career, Satchel Paige threw nothing but fastballs. Nothing. Oh, he named them different names—Bat Dodger, Midnight Rider, Midnight Creeper, Jump Ball, Trouble Ball—but essentially they were all fastballs. And he was still unhittable for the better part of 15 years. One pitch. It's a lot like Mariano Rivera, except he wasn't doing it for one inning at a time. He was pitching complete games day after day. That had to be some kind of incredible fastball. ... [he was] perhaps the most precise pitcher in baseball history—he threw ludicrously hard. And he also threw hundreds and hundreds of innings.


title: Satchel Paige

text: Hall of Famer Charlie Gehringer, who faced Paige at the peak of his career, said "I never hit against anybody better."


title: Satchel Paige

text: In an article in "Esquire" magazine in 1976, sportswriter Harry Stein published an article called the "All Time All-Star Argument Starter", a list of five ethnic baseball teams. Paige, a choice Stein meant more out of sentiment than anything else, was the relief pitcher on his black team.


title: Satchel Paige

text: On May 31, 1981, the ABC made-for-television movie "" aired, starring Louis Gossett Jr. as Paige, Beverly Todd as Lahoma, and former baseball pro Bubba Phillips as Coach Hardy. Paige was paid $10,000 for his story and technical advice. The film was based on the 1962 book, "Maybe I'll Pitch Forever". In August, with great difficulty because of health problems, he attended a reunion of Negro league players held in Ashland, Kentucky, that paid special tribute to him and Cool Papa Bell. Attending the reunion were Willie Mays, Buck Leonard, Monte Irvin, Judy Johnson, Chet Brewer, Gene Benson, Bob Feller and Happy Chandler.


title: Satchel Paige

text: In 1999, he ranked Number 19 on "Sporting News" list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.


title: Satchel Paige

text: On July 28, 2006, a statue of Satchel Paige was unveiled in Cooper Park, Cooperstown, New York commemorating the contributions of the Negro leagues to baseball.


title: Debits and credits

text: Debits and credits in double-entry bookkeeping are entries made in account ledgers to record changes in value resulting from business transactions. A debit entry in an account represents a transfer of value "to" that account, and a credit entry represents a transfer "from" the account. Each transaction transfers value from credited accounts to debited accounts. For example, a tenant who writes a rent cheque to a landlord would enter a credit for the bank account on which the cheque is drawn, and a debit in a rent expense account. Similarly, the landlord would enter a credit in the rent income account associated with the tenant and a debit for the bank account where the cheque is deposited.


title: Debits and credits

text: Debits and credits are traditionally distinguished by writing the transfer amounts in separate columns of an account book. Alternately, they can be listed in one column, indicating debits with the suffix "Dr" or writing them plain, and indicating credits with the suffix "Cr" or a minus sign. Despite the use of a minus sign, debits and credits do not correspond directly to positive and negative numbers. When the total of debits in an account exceeds the total of credits, the account is said to have a net debit balance equal to the difference; when the opposite is true, it has a net credit balance. For a particular account, one of these will be the normal balance type and will be reported as a positive number, while a negative balance will indicate an abnormal situation, as when a bank account is overdrawn. Debit balances are normal for asset and expense accounts, and credit balances are normal for liability, equity and revenue accounts.


title: Debits and credits

text: The first known recorded use of the terms is Venetian Luca Pacioli's 1494 work, "Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita" ("All about Arithmetic, Geometry, Proportions and Proportionality"). Pacioli devoted one section of his book to documenting and describing the double-entry bookkeeping system in use during the Renaissance by Venetian merchants, traders and bankers. This system is still the fundamental system in use by modern bookkeepers. Indian merchants had developed a double-entry bookkeeping system, called "bahi-khata", predating Pacioli's work by at least many centuries, and which was likely a direct precursor of the European adaptation.


title: Debits and credits

text: It is sometimes said that, in its original Latin, Pacioli's "Summa" used the Latin words (to owe) and (to entrust) to describe the two sides of a closed accounting transaction. Assets were owed to the owner and the owners' equity was entrusted to the company. At the time negative numbers were not in use. When his work was translated, the Latin words "debere" and "credere" became the English "debit" and "credit". Under this theory, the abbreviations Dr (for debit) and Cr (for credit) derive directly from the original Latin. However, Sherman casts doubt on this idea because Pacioli uses "Per" (Italian for "by") for the debtor and "A" (Italian for "to") for the creditor in the Journal entries. Sherman goes on to say that the earliest text he found that actually uses "Dr." as an abbreviation in this context was an English text, the third edition (1633) of Ralph Handson's book "Analysis or Resolution of Merchant Accompts" and that Handson uses Dr. as an abbreviation for the English word "debtor." (Sherman could not locate a first edition, but speculates that it too used Dr. for debtor.) The words actually used by Pacioli for the left and right sides of the Ledger are "in dare" and "in havere" ("give" and "receive"). Geijsbeek the translator suggests in the preface: 'if we today would abolish the use of the words debit and credit in the ledger and substitute the ancient terms of "shall give" and "shall have" or "shall receive", the personification of accounts in the proper way would not be difficult and, with it, bookkeeping would become more intelligent to the proprietor, the layman and the student.'


title: Debits and credits

text: As Jackson has noted, "debtor" need not be a person, but can be an abstract party: "...it became the practice to extend the meanings of the terms ... beyond their original personal connotation and apply them to inanimate objects and abstract conceptions..." This sort of abstraction is already apparent in Richard Dafforne's 17th-century text "The Merchant's Mirror", where he states "Cash representeth (to me) a man to whom I … have put my money into his keeping; the which by reason is obliged to render it back."


title: Debits and credits

text: To determine whether to debit or credit a specific account, we use either the "accounting equation" approach (based on five accounting rules), or the "classical approach" (based on three rules). Whether a "debit" increases or decreases an account's net balance depends on what kind of account it is. The basic principle is that the account receiving benefit is debited, while the account giving benefit is credited. For instance, an increase in an "asset" account is a debit. An increase in a "liability" or an "equity" account is a credit.


title: Debits and credits

text: The complete accounting equation based on the modern approach is very easy to remember if you focus on Assets, Expenses, Costs, Dividends (highlighted in chart). All those account types increase with debits or left side entries. Conversely, a decrease to any of those accounts is a credit or right side entry. On the other hand, increases in revenue, liability or equity accounts are credits or right side entries, and decreases are left side entries or debits.


title: Debits and credits

text: Debits and credits occur simultaneously in every financial transaction in double-entry bookkeeping. In the accounting equation, Assets = Liabilities + Equity, so, if an asset account increases (a debit (left)), then either another asset account must decrease (a credit (right)), or a liability or equity account must increase (a credit (right)). In the extended equation, revenues increase equity and expenses, costs & dividends decrease equity, so their difference is the impact on the equation.


title: Debits and credits

text: For example, if a company provides a service to a customer who does not pay immediately, the company records an increase in assets, Accounts Receivable with a debit entry, and an increase in Revenue, with a credit entry. When the company receives the cash from the customer, two accounts again change on the company side, the cash account is debited (increased) and the Accounts Receivable account is now decreased (credited). When the cash is deposited to the bank account, two things also change, on the bank side: the bank records an increase in its cash account (debit) and records an increase in its liability to the customer by recording a credit in the customer's account (which is not cash). Note that, technically, the deposit is not a decrease in the cash (asset) of the company and should not be recorded as such. It is just a transfer to a proper bank account of record in the company's books, not affecting the ledger.


title: Debits and credits

text: To make it more clear, the bank views the transaction from a different perspective but follows the same rules: the bank's vault cash (asset) increases, which is a debit; the increase in the customer's account balance (liability from the bank's perspective) is a credit. A customer's periodic bank statement generally shows transactions from the bank's perspective, with cash deposits characterized as credits (liabilities) and withdrawals as debits (reductions in liabilities) in depositor's accounts. In the company's books the exact opposite entries should be recorded to account for the same cash. This concept is important since this is why so many people misunderstand what debit/credit really means.


title: Debits and credits

text: When setting up the accounting for a new business, a number of accounts are established to record all business transactions that are expected to occur. Typical accounts that relate to almost every business are: Cash, Accounts Receivable, Inventory, Accounts Payable and Retained Earnings. Each account can be broken down further, to provide additional detail as necessary. For example: Accounts Receivable can be broken down to show each customer that owes the company money. In simplistic terms, if Bob, Dave, and Roger owe the company money, the Accounts Receivable account will contain a separate account for Bob, and Dave and Roger. All 3 of these accounts would be added together and shown as a single number (i.e. total 'Accounts Receivable' – balance owed) on the balance sheet. All accounts for a company are grouped together and summarized on the balance sheet in 3 sections which are: Assets, Liabilities and Equity.


title: Debits and credits

text: All accounts must first be classified as one of the five types of accounts (accounting elements) ( asset, liability, equity, income and expense). To determine how to classify an account into one of the five elements, the definitions of the five account types must be fully understood. The definition of an asset according to IFRS is as follows, "An asset is a resource controlled by the entity as a result of past events from which future economic benefits are expected to flow to the entity". In simplistic terms, this means that Assets are accounts viewed as having a future value to the company (i.e. cash, accounts receivable, equipment, computers). Liabilities, conversely, would include items that are obligations of the company (i.e. loans, accounts payable, mortgages, debts).


title: Debits and credits

text: The Equity section of the balance sheet typically shows the value of any outstanding shares that have been issued by the company as well as its earnings. All Income and expense accounts are summarized in the Equity Section in one line on the balance sheet called Retained Earnings. This account, in general, reflects the cumulative profit (retained earnings) or loss (retained deficit) of the company.


title: Debits and credits

text: The Profit and Loss Statement is an expansion of the Retained Earnings Account. It breaks-out all the Income and expense accounts that were summarized in Retained Earnings. The Profit and Loss report is important in that it shows the detail of sales, cost of sales, expenses and ultimately the profit of the company. Most companies rely heavily on the profit and loss report and review it regularly to enable strategic decision making.


title: Debits and credits

text: The words debit and credit can sometimes be confusing because they depend on the point of view from which a transaction is observed. In accounting terms, assets are recorded on the left side (debit) of asset accounts, because they are typically shown on the left side of the accounting equation ("A=L+SE"). Likewise, an increase in liabilities and shareholder's equity are recorded on the right side (credit) of those accounts, thus they also maintain the balance of the accounting equation. In other words, if "assets are increased with left side entries, the accounting equation is balanced only if increases in liabilities and shareholder’s equity are recorded on the opposite or right side. Conversely, decreases in assets are recorded on the right side of asset accounts, and decreases in liabilities and equities are recorded on the left side". Similar is the case with revenues and expenses, what increases shareholder's equity is recorded as credit because they are in the right side of equation and vice versa. Typically, when reviewing the financial statements of a business, Assets are Debits and Liabilities and Equity are Credits. For example, when two companies transact with one another say Company A buys something from Company B then Company A will record a decrease in cash (a Credit), and Company B will record an increase in cash (a Debit). The same transaction is recorded from two different perspectives.


title: Debits and credits

text: This use of the terms can be counter-intuitive to people unfamiliar with bookkeeping concepts, who may always think of a credit as an increase and a debit as a decrease. This is because most people typically only see their personal bank accounts and billing statements (e.g., from a utility). A depositor's bank account is actually a Liability to the bank, because the bank legally owes the money to the depositor. Thus, when the customer makes a deposit, the bank credits the account (increases the bank's liability). At the same time, the bank adds the money to its own cash holdings account. Since this account is an Asset, the increase is a debit. But the customer typically does not see this side of the transaction.


title: Debits and credits

text: On the other hand, when a utility customer pays a bill or the utility corrects an overcharge, the customer's account is credited. This is because the customer's account is one of the utility's accounts receivable, which are Assets to the utility because they represent money the utility can expect to receive from the customer in the future. Credits actually decrease Assets (the utility is now owed less money). If the credit is due to a bill payment, then the utility will add the money to its own cash account, which is a debit because the account is another Asset. Again, the customer views the credit as an increase in the customer's own money and does not see the other side of the transaction.


title: Debits and credits

text: Debit cards and credit cards are creative terms used by the banking industry to market and identify each card. From the cardholder's point of view, a credit card account normally contains a credit balance, a debit card account normally contains a debit balance. A debit card is used to make a purchase with one's own money. A credit card is used to make a purchase by borrowing money.


title: Debits and credits

text: From the bank's point of view, when a debit card is used to pay a merchant, the payment causes a decrease in the amount of money the bank "owes to" the cardholder. From the bank's point of view, your debit card account is the bank's liability. A decrease to the bank's liability account is a debit. From the bank's point of view, when a credit card is used to pay a merchant, the payment causes an increase in the amount of money the bank "is owed by" the cardholder. From the bank's point of view, your credit card account is the bank's asset. An increase to the bank's asset account is a debit. Hence, using a debit card "or" credit card causes a debit to the cardholder's account in either situation when viewed from the bank's perspective.


title: Debits and credits

text: General ledger is the term for the comprehensive collection of T-accounts (it is so called because there was a pre-printed vertical line in the middle of each ledger page and a horizontal line at the top of each ledger page, like a large letter T). Before the advent of computerized accounting, manual accounting procedure used a ledger book for each T-account. The collection of all these books was called the general ledger. The "chart of accounts" is the table of contents of the general ledger. Totaling of all debits and credits in the general ledger at the end of a financial period is known as "trial balance".


title: Debits and credits

text: "Daybooks" or journals are used to list every single transaction that took place during the day, and the list is totaled at the end of the day. These daybooks are not part of the double-entry bookkeeping system. The information recorded in these daybooks is then transferred to the general ledgers, where it is said to be "posted". Modern computer software allows for the instant update of each ledger account; for example, when recording a cash receipt in a cash receipts journal a debit is posted to a cash ledger account with a corresponding credit to the ledger account from which the cash was received. Not every single transaction needs to be entered into a T-account; usually only the sum (the batch total) of the book transactions for the day is entered in the general ledger.


title: Debits and credits

text: There are five fundamental elements within accounting. These elements are as follows: Assets, Liabilities, Equity (or Capital), Income (or Revenue) and Expenses. The five accounting elements are all affected in either a positive or negative way. A credit transaction does not always dictate a positive value or increase in a transaction and similarly, a debit does not always indicate a negative value or decrease in a transaction. An asset account is often referred to as a "debit account" due to the account's standard "increasing" attribute on the debit side. When an asset (e.g. an espresso machine) has been acquired in a business, the transaction will affect the debit side of that asset account illustrated below:


title: Debits and credits

text: The "X" in the debit column denotes the increasing effect of a transaction on the asset "account balance" (total debits less total credits), because a debit to an asset account is an increase. The asset account above has been "added to" by a debit value X, i.e. the balance has increased by £X or $X. Likewise, in the liability account below, the X in the credit column denotes the increasing effect on the liability account balance (total credits less total debits), because a credit to a liability account is an increase.


title: Debits and credits

text: "All "mini-ledgers" in this section show standard increasing attributes for the five elements of accounting."


title: Debits and credits

text: Real accounts are assets. Personal accounts are liabilities and owners' equity and represent people and entities that have invested in the business. Nominal accounts are revenue, expenses, gains, and losses. Accountants close out accounts at the end of each accounting period. This method is used in the United Kingdom, where it is simply known as the Traditional approach.


title: Debits and credits

text: Transactions are recorded by a debit to one account and a credit to another account using these three "golden rules of accounting":


title: Debits and credits

text: Each transaction that takes place within the business will consist of at least one debit to a specific account and at least one credit to another specific account. A debit to one account can be balanced by more than one credit to other accounts, and vice versa. For all transactions, the total debits must be equal to the total credits and therefore "balance".


title: Debits and credits

text: The equation thus becomes A – L – E = 0 (zero). When the total debits equals the total credits for each account, then the equation balances.


title: Debits and credits

text: In this form, increases to the amount of accounts on the left-hand side of the equation are recorded as debits, and decreases as credits. Conversely for accounts on the right-hand side, increases to the amount of accounts are recorded as credits to the account, and decreases as debits.


title: Debits and credits

text: Here Income and Expenses are regarded as temporary or nominal accounts which pertain only to the current accounting period whereas Asset, Liability, and Equity accounts are permanent or real accounts pertaining to the lifetime of the business. The temporary accounts are closed to the Equity account at the end of the accounting period to record profit/loss for the period. Both sides of these equations must be equal (balance).


title: Debits and credits

text: Each transaction is recorded in a ledger or "T" account, e.g. a ledger account named "Bank" that can be changed with either a debit or credit transaction.


title: Debits and credits

text: In accounting it is acceptable to draw-up a ledger account in the following manner for representation purposes:


title: Debits and credits

text: Accounts are created/opened when the need arises for whatever purpose or situation the entity may have. For example, if your business is an airline company they will have to purchase airplanes, therefore even if an account is not listed below, a bookkeeper or accountant can create an account for a specific item, such as an asset account for airplanes. In order to understand how to classify an account into one of the five elements, a good understanding of the "definitions" of these accounts is required. Below are examples of some of the more common accounts that pertain to the five accounting elements:


title: Debits and credits

text: Asset accounts are economic resources which benefit the business/entity and will continue to do so. They are Cash, bank, accounts receivable, inventory, land, buildings/plant, machinery, furniture, equipment, supplies, vehicles, trademarks and patents, goodwill, prepaid expenses, prepaid insurance, debtors (people who owe us money, due within one year), VAT input etc.


title: Debits and credits

text: Liability accounts record debts or future obligations a business or entity owes to others. When one institution borrows from another for a period of time, the ledger of the borrowing institution categorises the argument under liability accounts.


title: Debits and credits

text: Equity accounts record the claims of the owners of the business/entity to the assets of that business/entity.


title: Debits and credits

text: Income accounts record all increases in Equity other than that contributed by the owner/s of the business/entity.


title: Debits and credits

text: Services rendered, sales, interest income, membership fees, rent income, interest from investment, recurring receivables, donation etc.


title: Debits and credits

text: Expense accounts record all decreases in the owners' equity which occur from using the assets or increasing liabilities in delivering goods or services to a customer – the costs of doing business.


title: Debits and credits

text: Telephone, water, electricity, repairs, salaries, wages, depreciation, bad debts, stationery, entertainment, honorarium, rent, fuel, utility, interest etc.


title: Debits and credits

text: Quick Services business purchases a computer for £500, on credit, from ABC Computers. Recognize the following transaction for Quick Services in a ledger account (T-account):


title: Debits and credits

text: Quick Services has acquired a new computer which is classified as an asset within the business. According to the accrual basis of accounting, even though the computer has been purchased on credit, the computer is already the property of Quick Services and must be recognised as such. Therefore, the equipment account of Quick Services increases and is debited:


title: Debits and credits

text: As the transaction for the new computer is made "on credit", the payable "ABC Computers" has not yet been paid. As a result, a liability is created within the entity's records. Therefore, to balance the accounting equation the corresponding liability account is credited:


title: Debits and credits

text: The journal entry "ABC Computers" is indented to indicate that this is the credit transaction. It is accepted accounting practice to indent credit transactions recorded within a journal.


title: Debits and credits

text: The process of using debits and credits creates a ledger format that resembles the letter "T". The term "T-account" is accounting jargon for a "ledger account" and is often used when discussing bookkeeping. The reason that a ledger account is often referred to as a T-account is due to the way the account is physically drawn on paper (representing a "T"). The left column is for debit (Dr) entries, while the right column is for credit (Cr) entries.


title: Debits and credits

text: All accounts also can be debited or credited depending on what transaction has taken place. For example, when a vehicle is purchased using cash, the asset account "Vehicles" is "debited" and simultaneously the asset account "Bank or Cash" is "credited" due to the payment for the vehicle using cash. Some balance sheet items have corresponding "contra" accounts, with negative balances, that offset them. Examples are accumulated depreciation against equipment, and allowance for bad debts (also known as allowance for doubtful accounts) against accounts receivable. United States GAAP utilizes the term "contra" for specific accounts only and does not recognize the second half of a transaction as a contra, thus the term is restricted to accounts that are related. For example, sales returns and allowance and sales discounts are contra revenues with respect to sales, as the balance of each contra (a debit) is the opposite of sales (a credit). To understand the actual value of sales, one must net the contras against sales, which gives rise to the term net sales (meaning net of the contras).


title: Debits and credits

text: A more specific definition in common use is an account with a balance that is the opposite of the normal balance (Dr/Cr) for that section of the general ledger. An example is an office coffee fund: Expense "Coffee" (Dr) may be immediately followed by "Coffee – employee contributions" (Cr). Such an account is used for clarity rather than being a necessary part of GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles).


title: Debits and credits

text: Each of the following accounts is either an Asset (A), Contra Account (CA), Liability (L), Shareholders' Equity (SE), Revenue (Rev), Expense (Exp) or Dividend (Div) account.


title: Debits and credits

text: Account transactions can be recorded as a debit to one account and a credit to another account using the modern or traditional approaches in accounting and following are their normal balances:


title: Jeff Ross

text: Jeffrey Ross Lifschultz (born September 13, 1965) is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He is best known as the "Roastmaster General" for his insult comedy, his multiple appearances at celebrity roasts held by the New York Friars Club, the "Comedy Central Roast" television series, and the Netflix historical comedy series "Historical Roasts". In 2009 the "Chicago Tribune" called Ross "the new millennium Don Rickles." His directorial debut, the 2006 documentary "", won the prize for Best Film at the Comedia film festival held at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal.


title: Jeff Ross

text: Ross was raised in Newark, New Jersey, until he was in second grade; then his family moved to Union, New Jersey, and later to Springfield, New Jersey, where he attended Jonathan Dayton High School. He is of Jewish heritage and has a younger sister named Robyn. His mother Marsha died from leukemia when he was 14 years old. His father died of drug-related causes when Ross was 19 years old and attending college. His father owned and ran Clinton Manor Catering, a business that was started by Ross's great-grandmother. The business was located in Newark, and later moved to Union.


title: Jeff Ross

text: Ross attended Boston University as a broadcasting and film major with a minor in political science. He graduated from the Boston University College of Communication in 1987. Ross also worked as the music director at the university's student-run radio station WTBU in addition to working for the university's public radio station WBUR where he was an audio engineer.


title: Jeff Ross

text: Ross credits his tough upbringing in New Jersey for helping him develop his talent for insult comedy, which he says he developed as a defense mechanism. Ross stated in an interview with "The Atlanta Constitution": "Everyone in my family was good at [roasting]. I had to quickly learn not just to take a joke but to give it back. My uncle Murray was the first to bust my chops. We called him mean Murray."


title: Jeff Ross

text: Ross began performing stand-up in 1989 after attending a comedy class. He appeared on "A&E's An Evening at the Improv" in 1994. By 1995 he was performing at iconic New York clubs like the Comedy Cellar and Stand Up NY. That same year he was invited by the New York Friars Club to participate in a roast of actor Steven Seagal.


title: Jeff Ross

text: Ross became a regular at the Friars Club roasts and was given the title of "Roastmaster General". The Friars Club's first televised event was the roast of Drew Carey that was broadcast on Comedy Central in 1998. Ross credits a particular joke that he made at the expense of attendees Bea Arthur and Sandra Bernhardt at the 1999 roast of Jerry Stiller for taking his roasting career to the next level. That same year Jimmy Kimmel hired Ross as a writer on "The Man Show" and Ross also wrote some of the punchlines for Billy Crystal's monologue at the Oscars in 2000.


title: Jeff Ross

text: In 2003 Comedy Central began producing their own celebrity roasts. Ross has been a roaster at all Comedy Central roasts since the 2005 roast of Pamela Anderson. During his "Comedy Central Roast" appearances Ross became known for dressing-up in edgy and sometimes controversial costumes: He roasted Charlie Sheen dressed as Muammar Gaddafi; he roasted Rob Lowe dressed as "Purple Rain"-era Prince on an episode that aired five months after the musician's death; he roasted Roseanne Barr dressed as the late football coach Joe Paterno during the height of the Penn State child sex abuse scandal; he also roasted James Franco wearing cornrows and a neck tattoo in reference to Franco's character in the 2012 film "Spring Breakers".


title: Jeff Ross

text: Ross has taken part in several USO tours and has performed stand-up comedy at US Military bases in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. Ross first traveled to Iraq in 2003 as part of a comedy tour hosted by Drew Carey. In 2005 Ross released the film "", which he both produced and directed and which documented his experiences on the Iraq tour. That same year the film won the prize for Best Film at the Comedia film festival, a comedy film festival held annually in Montreal as part of the Just for Laughs comedy festival. In 2006 the film was shown on Showtime and also screened at that year's South by Southwest Film Festival. In 2017 the USO made Ross the Ambassador of Veterans Outreach for the Artists & Athletes Alliance.


title: Jeff Ross

text: Ross published his first book, "I Only Roast the Ones I Love: Busting Balls Without Burning Bridges", in 2009. The book recounts his journey to becoming Roastmaster General and includes tips on writing roast jokes and how to put on a roast.


title: Jeff Ross

text: Ross was the creator and host of the comedy panel show "The Burn with Jeff Ross", which aired on Comedy Central for two seasons from 2012 to 2013.


title: Jeff Ross

text: In 2015, Ross starred in the Comedy Central special "Jeff Ross Roasts Criminals: Live from Brazos County Jail", where he performed stand-up comedy for male and female convicts in Brazos County, Texas. The following year he released "Jeff Ross Roasts Cops" where he performed for members of the Boston Police Department.


title: Jeff Ross

text: Ross and comedian Brian Moses launched "Jeff Ross Presents Roast Battle" on Comedy Central in 2016. The show consists of comedians competing in one-on-one roast battles where the winners are decided by Ross and a panel of guest judges. Ross also appeared as a battler in final episode of the show's third season in a battle with NBA player Blake Griffin.


title: Jeff Ross

text: In 2018 Ross and fellow comedian Dave Attell embarked on their "Bumping Mics" comedy tour. Footage of their tour was also released in a three-part special on Netflix. The "Bumping Mics" comedy special was filmed during three of their performances at the Comedy Cellar in New York City. Their shows consisted of observational and political humor interspersed with Ross and Attell roasting one another as well as members of the audience. The comedians also invited audience members onto the stage, some of whom included Bob Saget, Gilbert Gottfried, Michael Che, Amy Schumer, Nikki Glaser and Paul Rudd.


title: Jeff Ross

text: Starting in 2019, Netflix began airing the series "Historical Roasts", where Ross hosts fictionalized versions of comedy roasts for figures like Abraham Lincoln and Anne Frank.


title: Jeff Ross

text: One of Ross's first acting roles was a small part in the 1996 comedy film "Celtic Pride". Some of his other film roles include a security guard the film "Stuck on You" (2003) and a wedding band leader in the film "Along Came Polly" (2004). Ross's television acting work includes roles on HBO's "Six Feet Under" and "Crashing", and Showtime's "Weeds". He also played a dramatic role on CBS's "".


title: Jeff Ross

text: Ross was co-creator of the satirical animated program "Where My Dogs At?" that was broadcast on MTV2 in 2006. The series centers around characters Buddy, a beagle voiced by Ross, and Woof, a bulldog voiced by Tracy Morgan. Ross has also voiced a characters on two episodes of the animated series "Future-Worm!" as well as on an episode of the live-action/animated series "Happy!" An animated version of Jeff Ross (voiced by Ross himself) appears in an episode of "" that aired in 2012. During the episode his character attends a roast of Batman.


title: Jeff Ross

text: Ross appeared in the 2005 documentary "The Aristocrats" about the famous dirty joke of the same name.


title: Jeff Ross

text: He was the guest on the debut episode of the "WTF with Marc Maron" podcast in 2009 and also appeared on the podcast's 800th episode in 2017.


title: Jeff Ross

text: Ross appeared in the third tournament of Celebrity Poker in 2004, but lost in his first match. He was also a competitor on the seventh season of "Dancing with the Stars" that aired in 2008. During rehearsal for their first dance, his dancing partner Edyta Śliwińska accidentally poked Ross in the eye, causing a scratched cornea. Against medical advice, Ross continued the competition, but the couple were the first to be eliminated.


title: Jeff Ross

text: In 2011 Ross visited the protesters of the Occupy movement in Los Angeles to support their cause. He took to the microphone at a stage set-up at Los Angeles City Hall. His talk included roasting Wall Street and the big banks.


title: Jeff Ross

text: In June 2020, an allegation that Ross had engaged in a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old when he was 34 was published in the media; his accuser, Jessica Radtke, had also posted these allegations on her Facebook page in 2019. In August, a "Vulture" article stated that six unnamed people had confirmed that they were aware of the relationship. Radtke's father also said he approved of the relationship at the time. Ross denied the allegations. In November, Ross filed a defamation suit in the New York State Supreme Court, in which multiple named witnesses (including Radtke's father) refuted her allegations; Radtke was accused of extorting Ross for "significant sums of money".


title: Town

text: A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.


title: Town

text: The word "town" shares an origin with the German word , the Dutch word , and the Old Norse . The original Proto-Germanic word, *"tūnan", is thought to be an early borrowing from Proto-Celtic *"dūnom" (cf. Old Irish , Welsh ).


title: Town

text: The original sense of the word in both Germanic and Celtic was that of a fortress or an enclosure. Cognates of "town" in many modern Germanic languages designate a fence or a hedge. In English and Dutch, the meaning of the word took on the sense of the space which these fences enclosed, and through which a track must run. In England, a town was a small community that could not afford or was not allowed to build walls or other larger fortifications, and built a palisade or stockade instead. In the Netherlands, this space was a garden, more specifically those of the wealthy, which had a high fence or a wall around them (like the garden of the palace of Het Loo in Apeldoorn, which was the model for the privy garden of William III and Mary II at Hampton Court). In Old Norse means a (grassy) place between farmhouses, and the word is still used with a similar meaning in modern Norwegian.


title: Town

text: Old English became a common place-name suffix in England and southeastern Scotland during the Anglo-Saxon settlement period. In Old English and Early and Middle Scots, the words "ton", "toun", etc. could refer to diverse kinds of settlements from agricultural estates and holdings, partly picking up the Norse sense (as in the Scots word ) at one end of the scale, to fortified municipalities. Other common Anglo-Saxon suffixes included "ham" 'home', "stede" 'stead', and "burh" 'bury, borough, burgh'.


title: Town

text: In some cases, "town" is an alternative name for "city" or "village" (especially a larger village). Sometimes, the word "town" is short for "township". In general, today towns can be differentiated from townships, villages, or hamlets on the basis of their economic character, in that most of a town's population will tend to derive their living from manufacturing industry, commerce, and public services rather than primary sector industries such as agriculture or related activities.


title: Town

text: A place's population size is not a reliable determinant of urban character. In many areas of the world, e.g. in India at least until recent times, a large village might contain several times as many people as a small town. In the United Kingdom, there are historical cities that are far smaller than the larger towns.


title: Town

text: The modern phenomenon of extensive suburban growth, satellite urban development, and migration of city dwellers to villages has further complicated the definition of towns, creating communities urban in their economic and cultural characteristics but lacking other characteristics of urban localities.


title: Town

text: Some forms of non-rural settlement, such as temporary mining locations, may be clearly non-rural, but have at best a questionable claim to be called a town.


title: Town

text: Towns often exist as distinct governmental units, with legally defined borders and some or all of the appurtenances of local government (e.g. a police force). In the United States these are referred to as "incorporated towns". In other cases the town lacks its own governance and is said to be "unincorporated". Note that the existence of an unincorporated town may be legally set out by other means, e.g. zoning districts. In the case of some planned communities, the town exists legally in the form of covenants on the properties within the town. The United States Census identifies many census-designated places (CDPs) by the names of unincorporated towns which lie within them; however, those CDPs typically include rural and suburban areas and even surrounding villages and other towns.


title: Town

text: The distinction between a town and a city similarly depends on the approach: a city may strictly be an administrative entity which has been granted that designation by law, but in informal usage, the term is also used to denote an urban locality of a particular size or importance: whereas a medieval city may have possessed as few as 10,000 inhabitants, today some consider an urban place of fewer than 100,000 as a town, even though there are many officially designated cities that are much smaller than that.


title: Town

text: In toponymic terminology, names of individual towns and cities are called "astyonyms" or "astionyms" (from Ancient Greek 'town, city', and 'name').


title: Town

text: Through different periods of recorded history, many towns have grown into sizeable settlements, with the development of properties, centres of culture, and specialized economies. Since the establishment of UNESCO in 1946, dozens of towns have been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List for their examples of well-preserved condition.


title: Town

text: Çatalhöyük, currently an archaeological site, was considered to be the oldest inhabited town that existed from around 7500 BC. Inscribed as a World Heritage Site, it remains a depopulated town with a complex of ruins.


title: Town

text: In Roman times, a villa was a rural settlement formed by a main residential building and another series of secondary buildings. It constituted the center from which an agricultural holding was administered. Subsequently, it lost its agricultural functions and reduced its activity to residential. With the consolidation of large estates during the Roman Empire, the town became the center of large farms.


title: Town

text: 193 countries have been involved in a common effort to agree on a common statistical definition of the three categories: cities, towns and rural areas.


title: Town

text: Australian geographer Thomas Griffith Taylor proposed a classification of towns based on their age and pattern of land use. He identified five types of town:


title: Town

text: In Afghanistan, towns and cities are known as "shār" (Dari: شهر, Pashto: ښار). As the country is an historically rural society with few larger settlements, with major cities never holding more than a few hundred thousand inhabitants before the 2000s, the lingual tradition of the country does not discriminate between towns and cities.


title: Town

text: In Albania and Kosovo means 'town', which is very similar to the word for city (), although there is no official use of the term for any settlement.


title: Town

text: In Albanian means 'small city' or 'new city', while in ancient times it referred to a small residential center within the walls of a castle.


title: Town

text: In Australia, most rural and regional centres of population can be called towns; many small towns have populations of less than 200. The smallest may be described as townships.


title: Town

text: In addition, some local government entities are officially styled as towns in Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, and formerly also (till the 1990s) in Victoria.


title: Town

text: The Austrian legal system does not distinguish between villages, towns, and cities. The country is partitioned into 2098 municipalities () of fundamentally equal rank. Larger municipalities are designated as market towns () or cities (), but these distinctions are purely symbolic and do not confer additional legal responsibilities. There is a number of smaller communities that are labelled cities because they used to be regional population centers in the distant past. The city of Rattenberg for example has about 400 inhabitants. The city of Hardegg has about 1200 inhabitants.


title: Town

text: Of the 201 cities in Austria, 15 are statutory cities (). A statutory city is a city that is vested, in addition to its purview as a municipality, with the duties of a district administrative authority. The status does not come with any additional autonomy: district administrative authorities are essentially just service centers that citizens use to interact with the national government, for example to apply for driver licenses or passports. The national government generally uses the provinces to run these points of contact on its behalf; in the case of statutory cities, the municipality gets to step up.


title: Town

text: In Brazil, since 1938, it was defined that the seat of the municipalities would pass to the category of city and give it the name and the districts would be designated by the name of their respective seats, and if they were not municipal seats, they would have the category of village.


title: Town

text: Bulgarians do not, in general, differentiate between 'city' and 'town'. However, in everyday language and media the terms "large towns" and "small towns" are in use. "Large towns" usually refers to Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna and Burgas, which have population over 200,000. Ruse and Stara Zagora are often included as well due to presence of relatively developed infrastructure and population over 100,000 threshold. It is difficult to call the remaining provincial capitals "large towns" as, in general, they are less developed and have shrinking population, some with as few as 30,000 inhabitants.


title: Town

text: In Bulgaria the Council of Ministers defines what constitutes a settlement, while the President of Bulgaria grants each settlement its title. In 2005 the requirement that villages that wish to classify themselves as town must have a social and technical infrastructure, as well as a population of no fewer than 3500 people. For resort settlements the requirements are lower with the population needing to be no fewer than 1000 people but infrastructure requirements remain.


title: Town

text: The legal definition of a town in Canada varies by province or territory, as each has jurisdiction over defining and legislating towns, cities and other types of municipal organization within its own boundaries.


title: Town

text: The province of Quebec is unique in that it makes no distinction under law between towns and cities. There is no intermediate level in French between and ("municipality" is an administrative term usually applied to a legal, not geographical entity), so both are combined under the single legal status of "ville". While an informal preference may exist among English speakers as to whether any individual is commonly referred to as a city or as a town, no distinction and no objective legal criteria exist to make such a distinction under law.


title: Town

text: In Chile, towns (Spanish: ) are defined by the National Statistics Institute (INE) as an urban entity with a population from 2001 to 5000 or an area with a population from 1001 to 2000 and an established economic activity.


title: Town

text: In the Czech Republic, a municipality can obtain the title of a city (), town () or market town (). The title is granted by law.


title: Town

text: Statutory cities (in English usually called just "cities"), which are defined by law no. 128/2000 Coll., can define their own self-governing municipal districts. There are 26 such cities, in addition to Prague, which is a "de facto" statutory city. All the Czech municipalities with more than 40,000 inhabitants are cities.


title: Town

text: Town and market town are above all ceremonious honorary degrees, referring to population, history and regional significance of a municipality. As the statistics of Czech municipalities shows, towns usually have between 1,000 and 35,000 inhabitants, with median around 4,000 and average around 6,500. Nowadays a municipality must have at least 3,000 inhabitants to have the right to request the town title. Market towns usually have between 500 and 4,000 inhabitants, with median and average both around 1,000.


title: Town

text: In Denmark, in many contexts no distinction is made between "city", "town" and "village"; all three translate as . In more specific use, for small villages and hamlets the word (meaning 'country town') is used, while the Danish equivalent of English "city" is (meaning 'large town'). For formal purposes, urban areas having at least 200 inhabitants are considered .


title: Town

text: Historically some towns held various privileges, the most important of which was the right to hold market. They were administered separately from the rural areas in both fiscal, military and legal matters. Such towns are known as (roughly the same meaning as "borough" albeit deriving from a different etymology) and they retain the exclusive right to the title even after the last vestiges of their privileges vanished through the reform of the local administration carried through in 1970.


title: Town

text: In Estonia, there is no distinction between a town and a city as the word is used for both bigger and smaller settlements, which are bigger than villages and boroughs. There are 30 municipal towns () in Estonia and a further 17 towns, which have merged with a municipal parish ().


title: Town

text: In Finland, there is no distinction between a town and a city as the word is used for both bigger and smaller settlements, which are bigger than villages and boroughs; although when talking about the word "town", the word is used ( means 'little' or 'small'). There are over one hundred municipal towns in Finland.


title: Town

text: From an administrative standpoint, the smallest level of local authorities are all called "communes". They can have anywhere from a handful to millions of inhabitants, and France has 36,000 of them. The French term for "town" is "" but French laws generally do not distinguish between towns and cities which are all commonly called . However, some laws do treat these authorities differently based on the population and different rules apply to the three big cities Paris, Lyon and Marseille. For historical reasons, six communes in the Meuse département exist as independent administrative entities despite having no inhabitants at all.


title: Town

text: For statistical purposes, the national statistical institute (INSEE) operates a distinction between urban areas with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants and bigger communes, the latter being called . Smaller settlements are usually called .


title: Town

text: Germans do not, in general, differentiate between 'city' and 'town'. The German word for both is , as it is the case in many other languages that do not differentiate between these concepts. The word for a 'village', as a smaller settlement, is . However, the International Statistics Conference of 1887 defined different sizes of , based on their population size, as follows: ('country town'; under 5,000), ('small town'; 5,000 to 20,000), ('middle town'; between 20,000 and 100,000) and ("large town"; 100,000 to 1,000,000). The term may be translated as 'city'. In addition, Germans may speak of a , a city with anywhere between one and five million inhabitants (such as Cologne, Munich, Hamburg and Berlin). Also, a city with more than five million inhabitants is often referred to as a (commonly translated as megacity).


title: Town

text: Historically, many settlements became a by being awarded a "Stadtrecht" in medieval times. In modern German language use, the historical importance, the existence of central functions (education, retail etc.) and the population density of an urban place might also be taken as characteristics of a . The modern local government organisation is subject to the laws of each state and refers to a (municipality), regardless of its historic title. While most form part of a (district) on a higher tier of local government, larger towns and cities may have the status of a , combining both the powers of a municipality and a district.


title: Town

text: Designations in different states are as diverse as e.g. in Australian States and Territories, and differ from state to state. In some German states, the words ('market'), (both used in southern Germany) or ('spot'; northern Germany e.g. in Lower Saxony) designate a town-like residential community between and with special importance to its outer conurbation area. Historically those had (market right) but not full town privileges; see Market town. The legal denomination of a specific settlement may differ from its common designation (e.g. – a legal term in Lower Saxony for a group of villages [, pl. ] with common local government created by combining municipalities [, pl. ]).


title: Town

text: In ordinary speech, Greeks use the word ('village') to refer to smaller settlements and the word or ('city') to refer to larger ones. Careful speakers may also use the word to refer to towns with a population of 2,000–9,999.


title: Town

text: In Greek administrative law there used to be a distinction between , i.e. municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants or considered important for some other geographical (county seats), historical or ecclesiastical (bishops' seats) reason, and κοινότητες, referring to smaller self-governing units, mostly villages. A sweeping reform, carried out in two stages early in the 21st century, merged most with the nearest , dividing the whole country into 325 self-governing . The former municipalities survive as administrative subdivisions (, ).


title: Town

text: Cyprus, including the Turkish-occupied areas, is also divided into 39 (in principle, with at least 5,000 inhabitants, though there are exceptions) and 576 .


title: Town

text: Hong Kong started developing new towns in the 1950s, to accommodate exponential population increase. The first new towns included Tsuen Wan and Kwun Tong. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, another stage of new town developments was launched. Nine new towns have been developed so far. Land use is carefully planned and development provides plenty of room for public housing projects. Rail transport is usually available at a later stage. The first towns are Sha Tin, Tsuen Wan, Tuen Mun and Tseung Kwan O. Tuen Mun was intended to be self-reliant, but was not successful and turned into a bedroom community like the other new towns. More recent developments are Tin Shui Wai and North Lantau (Tung Chung-Tai Ho).


title: Town

text: In Hungary there is no official distinction between a city and a town (the word for both in Hungarian is ). Nevertheless, the expressions formed by adding the adjectives ('small') and ('large') to the beginning of the root word (e.g. ) have been normalized to differentiate between cities and towns (towns being smaller, therefore bearing the name .) In Hungary, a village can gain the status of ('town'), if it meets a set of diverse conditions for quality of life and development of certain public services and utilities (e.g. having a local secondary school or installing full-area sewage collection pipe network). Every year the Minister of Internal Affairs selects candidates from a committee-screened list of applicants, whom the President of Republic usually affirms by issuing a bill of town's rank to them. Since being a town carries extra fiscal support from the government, many relatively small villages try to win the status of ('town rank') nowadays.


title: Town

text: Before the fall of communism in 1990, Hungarian villages with fewer than 10,000 residents were not allowed to become towns. Recently some settlements as small as 2,500 souls have received the rank of town (e.g. Visegrád, Zalakaros or Gönc) and meeting the conditions of development is often disregarded to quickly elevate larger villages into towns. As of middle 2013, there are 346 towns in Hungary, encompassing some 69% of the entire population.


title: Town

text: Towns of more than 50,000 people are able to gain the status of (town with the rights of a county), which allows them to maintain a higher degree of services. (There are a few exceptions, when towns of fewer than 50,000 people gained the status: Érd, Hódmezővásárhely, Salgótarján and Szekszárd) As of middle 2013, there are only 23 such towns in Hungary.


title: Town

text: The 2011 Census of India defines towns of two types: statutory town and census town. Statutory town is defined as all places with a municipality, corporation, cantonment board or notified town area committee. Census towns are defined as places that satisfy the following criteria:


title: Town

text: All the statutory towns, census towns and out growths are considered as urban settlements, as opposed to rural areas.


title: Town

text: Towns in India usually have basic infrastructure like shops, electricity, bituminised roads, post offices, banks, telephone facilities, high schools and sometimes a few government offices. The human population living in these towns may be a few thousand. There are some towns which can be labelled as Main road town.


title: Town

text: In state of Karnataka, towns are known as or in the Kannada language. Sometimes the terms ('city') or , which generally means 'place', are used for towns. The administrative council which governs these towns is known as or in Kannada depending on the number of people living within the town's boundaries.


title: Town

text: In contemporary Persian texts, no distinction is made between "city" and "town"; both translate as (). In older Persian texts (until the first half of the 20th century), the Arabic word () was used for a town. However, in the past 50 years, this word has become obsolete.


title: Town

text: There is a word in Persian which is used for special sort of satellite townships and city neighborhoods. It is (), (lit.: 'small city').


title: Town

text: Another smaller type of town or neighborhood in a big city is called (). and each have different legal definitions.


title: Town

text: Large cities such as Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Tabriz, etc. which have millions inhabitants are referred to as (), metropole.


title: Town

text: The pace in which different large villages have gained city status in Iran shows a dramatic increase in the last two decades.


title: Town

text: Bigger cities and towns usually are centers of a township (in Persian: (). itself is a subdivision of (), 'province'.


title: Town

text: The word () is used to describe villages, the word () to describe towns, and the word () to describe cities.


title: Town

text: "Within the county in which they are situated and of which they form part, there continue to be such other local government areas as are set out in Schedule 6 which – (a) in the case of the areas set out in Chapter 1 of Part 1 of that Schedule, shall be known as boroughs, and – (b) in the case of the areas set out in Chapter 2 of Part 1 and Part 2 of that Schedule, shall be known as towns, and in this Act a reference to a town shall include a reference to a borough."


title: Town

text: These provisions affect the replacement of the boroughs, towns and urban districts which existed before then. Similar reforms in the nomenclature of local authorities ( but not their functions) are effected by section 11 part 17 of the act includes provision (section 185(2))


title: Town

text: "Qualified electors of a town having a population of at least 7,500 as ascertained at the last preceding census or such other figure as the Minister may from time to time prescribe by regulations, and not having a town council, may make a proposal in accordance with paragraph (b) for the establishment of such a council"


title: Town

text: and contains provisions enabling the establishment of new town councils and provisions enabling the dissolution of existing or new town councils in certain circumstances


title: Town

text: The reference to "town having a population of at least 7,500 as ascertained at the last preceding census" hands much of the power relating to defining what is in fact a town over to the Central Statistics Office and their criteria are published as part of each census.


title: Town

text: Another reference to the Census and its role in determining what is or is not a town for some administrative purpose is in the Planning and Development act 2000 (part II chapter I which provides for Local area plans)


title: Town

text: "A local area plan shall be made in respect of an area which —(i) is designated as a town in the most recent census of population, other than a town designated as a suburb or environs in that census, (ii) has a population in excess of 2,000, and (iii) is situated within the functional area of a planning authority which is a county council."


title: Town

text: In short they speak of "towns with legally defined boundaries" ( i.e. those established by the Local Government Act 2001) and the remaining 664 as "census towns", defined by themselves since 1971 as "a cluster of 50 or more occupied dwellings in which within a distance of 800 meters there is a nucleus of 30 occupied houses on both sides of the road or twenty occupied houses on one side of the road" there is also a "200 meter criterion" for determining whether a house is part of a census town.


title: Town

text: There are four settlements which are historically and officially designated as towns (Douglas, Ramsey, Peel, Castletown); however


title: Town

text: Modern Hebrew does provide a word for the concept of a town: (), derived from (), the biblical word for 'city'. However, the term is normally used only to describe towns in foreign countries, i.e. urban areas of limited population, particularly when the speaker is attempting to evoke nostalgic or romantic attitudes. The term is also used to describe a Shtetl, a pre-Holocaust Eastern European Jewish town.


title: Town

text: Within Israel, established urban areas are always referred to as cities (with one notable exception explained below) regardless of their actual size. Israeli law does not define any nomenclature for distinction between urban areas based on size or any other factor – meaning that all urban settlements in Israel are legally referred to as "cities".


title: Town

text: The exception to the above is the term (, lit. 'Development Town') which is applied to certain cities in Israel based on the reasons for their establishment. These cities, created during the earlier decades of Israeli independence (1950s and 1960s, generally), were designed primarily to serve as commercial and transportation hubs, connecting smaller agricultural settlements in the northern and southern regions of the country (the "Periphery") to the major urban areas of the coastal and central regions. Some of these development towns have since grown to a comparatively large size, and yet are still referred to as development towns, particularly when the speaker wishes to emphasize their (often low) socio-economic status. Nonetheless, they are rarely (if ever) referred to simply as towns; when referring to one directly, it will be called either a development town or a city, depending on context.


title: Town

text: Although Italian provides different words for city (), town () and village (, old-fashioned, or "frazione", most common), no legal definitions exist as to how settlements must be classified. Administratively, both towns and cities are ruled as comuni/comunes, while villages might be subdivisions of the former.


title: Town

text: Generally, in everyday speech, a town is larger or more populated than a village and smaller than a city. Various cities and towns together may form a metropolitan area (). A city, can also be a culturally, economically or politically prominent community with respect to surrounding towns. Moreover, a city can be such by Presidential decree. A town, in contrast, can be an inhabited place which would elsewhere be styled a city, but has not received any official recognition.


title: Town

text: Remarkable exceptions do exist: for instance, Bassano del Grappa, was given the status of in 1760 by Francesco Loredan's dogal decree and has since then carried this title. Also, the Italian word for 'town' ( with lowercase P) must not be confused with the Italian word for 'country/nation' ( usually with uppercase P).


title: Town

text: In Japan city status (市 "shi") was traditionally reserved for only a few particularly large settlements. Over time however the necessary conditions to be a city have been watered down and today the only loose rules that apply are having a population over 50,000 and over 60% of the population in a "city centre". In recent times many small villages and towns have merged in order to form a city despite seeming geographically to be just a collection of villages.


title: Town

text: The distinction between towns (町 "machi/chō") and villages (村 "mura/son") is largely unwritten and purely one of population size when the settlement was founded with villages having under 10,000 and towns 10,000–50,000.


title: Town

text: In Latvia, towns and cities are indiscriminately called in singular form. The name is a contraction of two Latvian words: ('castle') and ('fence'), making it very obvious what is meant by the word – what is situated between the castle and the castle fence. However, a city can be called in reference to its size. A village is called or in Latvian.


title: Town

text: In Lithuanian, a city is called "" and a town is called "" (literally 'small '). Metropolises are called (literally 'big ').


title: Town

text: Before 1848 there was a legal distinction between and non- parts of the country, but the word no longer has any legal significance. About 220 places were granted ('city rights') and are still so called for historical and traditional reasons, though the word is also used for large urban areas that never obtained such rights. Because of this, in the Netherlands, no distinction is made between "city" and "town"; both translate as . A hamlet () usually has fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, a village () ranges from 1,000 up to 25,000 inhabitants, and a place above 25,000 can call itself either village or city, mostly depending on historic reasons or size of the place. As an example, The Hague never gained city rights, but because of its size – more than half a million inhabitants – it is regarded as a city. Staverden, with only 40 inhabitants, would be a hamlet, but because of its city rights it may call itself a city.


title: Town

text: In New Zealand, a town is a built-up area that is not large enough to be considered a city. Historically, this definition corresponded to a population of between approximately 1,000 and 20,000. Towns have no independent legal existence, being administered simply as built-up parts of districts, or, in some cases, of cities.


title: Town

text: New Zealand's towns vary greatly in size and importance, ranging from small rural service centres to significant regional centres such as Blenheim and Taupō. Typically, once a town reaches a population of somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 people, it will begin to be informally regarded as a city. One who regards a settlement as too small to be a town will typically call it a "township" or "village."


title: Town

text: In Norway, "city" and "town" both translate to "by", even if a city may be referred to as ('large town'). They are all part of and administered as a "kommune" ('municipality').


title: Town

text: Norway has had inland the northernmost city in the world: Hammerfest. Now the record is held by New Ålesund on the Norwegian island Svalbard.


title: Town

text: In the Philippines, the local official equivalent of the town is the municipality (Filipino: ). Every municipality, or town, in the country has a mayor () and a vice mayor () as well as local town officials (Sangguniang Bayan). Philippine towns, otherwise called municipalities, are composed of a number of villages and communities called "barangays" with one (or a few cluster of) (s) serving as the town center or "poblacion".


title: Town

text: Unique in Philippine towns is that they have fixed budget, population and land requirements to become as such, i.e. from a , or a cluster of such, to a town, or to become cities, i.e. from town to a city. Respectively, examples of these are the town of B.E. Dujali in Davao del Norte province, which was formed in 1998 from a cluster of five , and the city of El Salvador, which was converted from a town to a city in 2007. Each town in the Philippines was classified by its annual income and budget.


title: Town

text: A sharp, hierarchical distinction exists between Philippine cities ( or ) and towns, as towns in the country are juridically separate from cities, which are typically larger and more populous (some smaller and less populated) and which political and economic status are above those of towns. This was further supported and indicated by the income classification system implemented by the National Department of Finance, to which both cities and towns fell into their respective categories that indicate they are such as stated under Philippine law. However, both towns and cities equally share the status as local government units (LGUs) grouped under and belong to provinces and regions; both each are composed of and are governed by a mayor and a vice mayor supplemented by their respective LGU legislative councils. However despite this some towns in the Philippines are significantly larger than some cities in the Philippines such as Rodriguez, Rizal, Santa Maria, Bulacan and Minglanilla, Cebu are actually bigger than some regional centers.


title: Town

text: As of 30 April 2022, there are altogether 2477 municipalities (gmina) in Poland, including 1513 rural gminas, while the remaining 968 ones contain cities and towns. Among them, 666 towns are part of an urban-rural gmina while 302 cities and towns are standalone as an urban gmina. The latter group includes 107 cities (governed by a "prezydent miasta"), including 66 cities with powiat rights. 37 cities among the latter group are over 100,000, including 18 cities serving as a seat for voivode or voivodeship sejmik, informally called voivodeship cities.


title: Town

text: In the Polish language there is no linguistic distinction between a city and a town. The word for both is , as a form of settlement distinct from following: village (), hamlet (), settlement (), or colony (). Town status is conferred by government legislation; new towns are designated by the government in an annual regulation effective from the first day of the year. Such localities have usually a town mayor () as the head of the town executive. Towns may be called , a diminutive colloquially used for localities with a few thousand residents. Some settlements tend to remain villages even though they have a larger population than many smaller towns, primarily in order not to lose eligibility for the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development.


title: Town

text: Cities are the biggest municipalities. In the Polish language, there is no linguistic distinction between a city and a town, both translated . A city is, however, distinguished through being managed by a city mayor (, literally translated city president) instead of a town mayor () as the head of the city executive, thus being informally called "miasto prezydenckie", with such privilege automatically awarded to municipalities either inhabited by more than 100,000 residents (currently 37) or those enjoying the status of a city with powiat rights (currently 66). As of 2022, all of the former group fit into the latter, though it was not always the case in the past. There is, however, a number of exemptions due to historic or political reasons, when a municipality meets neither of these two conditions but nevertheless has the city status, including the only 3 capitals of the former voivodeships of Poland (1975–1998) not meeting the abovementioned criteria, as well as further 38 municipalities which do not fit into any of the mentioned categories but have nevertheless been allowed to keep the earlier awarded status due to unspecified historical reasons.


title: Town

text: Like other Iberian cultures, in Portugal there is a traditional distinction between towns ("") and cities (""). Similarly, although these areas are not defined under the constitution, and have no political function (with associated organs), they are defined by law, and a town must have:


title: Town

text: In this context, the town or city is subordinate to the local authority (civil parish or municipality, in comparison to the North American context, where they have political functions. In special cases, some villages may be granted the status of town if they possess historical, cultural or architectonic importance.


title: Town

text: The Portuguese urban settlements heraldry reflects the difference between towns and cities, with the coat of arms of a town bearing a crown with four4 towers, while the coat of arms of a city bears a crown withfive5 towers. This difference between towns and cities is still in use in other Portugues- speaking countries, but in Brazil is no longer in use.


title: Town

text: In Romania there is no official distinction between a city and a town (the word for both in Romanian is ). Cities and towns in Romania can have the status either of "municipiu", conferred to large urban areas, or only to smaller urban localities. Some settlements remain villages ("comune") even though they have a larger population than other smaller towns.


title: Town

text: Unlike English, the Russian language does not distinguish the terms "city" and "town"—both are translated as (). Occasionally the term is applied to urban-type settlements as well, even though the status of those is not the same as that of a city/town proper.


title: Town

text: In Russia, the criteria an inhabited locality needs to meet in order to be granted city/town () status vary in different federal subjects. In general, to qualify for this status, an inhabited locality should have more than 12,000 inhabitants and the occupation of no less than 85% of inhabitants must be other than agriculture. However, inhabited localities which were previously granted the city/town status but no longer meet the criteria can still retain the status for historical reasons.


title: Town

text: In Singapore, towns are large scale satellite housing developments which are designed to be self-contained. It includes public housing units, a town centre and other amenities. Helmed by a hierarchy of commercial developments, ranging from a town centre to precinct-level outlets, there is no need to venture out of town to meet the most common needs of residences. Employment can be found in industrial estates located within several towns. Educational, health care, and recreational needs are also taken care of with the provision of schools, hospitals, parks, sports complexes, and so on. The most populous town in the country is Bedok.


title: Town

text: In South Africa the Afrikaans term is used interchangeably with the English equivalent "town". A town is a settlement that has a size that is smaller than that of a city.


title: Town

text: In Spain, the equivalent of town would be , a population unit between a village () and a city (), and is not defined by the number of inhabitants, but by some historical rights and privileges dating from the Middle Ages, such as the right to hold a market or fair. For instance, while Madrid is technically a , Barcelona, with a smaller population, is known as a city.


title: Town

text: The Swedish language does not differentiate between towns and cities in the English sense of the words; both words are commonly translated as , a term which has no legal significance today. The term is used for an urban area or a locality, which however is a statistical rather than an administrative concept and encompasses densely settled villages with only 200 inhabitants as well as the major cities. The word "köping" corresponds to an English "market town" "(chipping)" or German "Markt" but is mainly of historical significance, as the term is not used today and only survives in some toponyms. Some towns with names ending in are cities with over 100,000 inhabitants today, e.g. Linköping.


title: Town

text: Before 1971, 132 larger municipalities in Sweden enjoyed special royal charters as "stad" instead of "kommun" (which is similar to a US county). However, since 1971 all municipalities are officially defined as , thus making no legal difference between, for instance, Stockholm and a small countryside municipality. Every urban area that was a before 1971 is still often referred to as a in daily speech. Since the 1980s, 14 of these municipalities have branded themselves as again, although this has no legal or administrative significance, as they still have to refer to themselves as in all legal documentation.


title: Town

text: For statistical purposes, Statistics Sweden officially defines a as an urban area of at least 10,000 inhabitants. Since 2017 it also defines a (literally 'big town') as a municipality with a population of at least 200,000 of which at least 200,000 are in its largest . This means that Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö are , i.e. 'major cities', while Uppsala, with a population of approximately 230,000 in the municipality, which covers an unusually large area, almost three times larger than the combined land area of the municipalities of Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö, is not. The largest contiguous urban area within Uppsala municipality has a population of well below 200,000, while the population of both Malmö municipality, with a land area only 1/14 the size of Uppsala municipality, and Malmö , i.e. contiguous urban area, is well over 300,000, and the population of the Malmö Metropolitan Area, with a land area only slightly larger than Uppsala Municipality, is well over 700,000. A difference in the size and population of the urban area between Uppsala and the smallest in Sweden, Malmö, is the reason Statistics Sweden changed the definition of in 2017.


title: Town

text: In Ukraine the term "town" (, ) existed from the Medieval period until 1925, when it was replaced by the Soviet government with "urban type settlement". Historically, a town in the Ukrainian lands was a smaller populated place that was chartered under the German town law and had a market square (see Market town).


title: Town

text: Informally, towns are also referred to today as cities of district significance, cities with small population, and former Jewish shtetls.


title: Town

text: In England and Wales, a town traditionally was a settlement which had a charter to hold a market or fair and therefore became a "market town". Market towns were distinguished from villages in that they were the economic hub of a surrounding area, and were usually larger and had more facilities.


title: Town

text: In parallel with popular usage, however, there are many technical and official definitions of what constitutes a town, to which various interested parties cling.


title: Town

text: In modern official usage the term "town" is employed either for old market towns, or for settlements which have a town council, or for settlements which elsewhere would be classed a city, but which do not have the legal right to call themselves such. Any parish council can decide to describe itself as a town council, but this will usually only apply to the smallest "towns" (because larger towns will be larger than a single civil parish).


title: Town

text: Not all settlements which are commonly described as towns have a town council or borough council. In fact, because of many successive changes to the structure of local government, there are now few large towns which are represented by a body closely related to their historic borough council. These days, a smaller town will usually be part of a local authority which covers several towns. And where a larger town "is" the seat of a local authority, the authority will usually cover a much wider area than the town itself (either a large rural hinterland, or several other, smaller towns).


title: Town

text: Additionally, there are "new towns" which were created during the 20th century, such as Basildon, Redditch and Telford.


title: Town

text: Some settlements which describe themselves as towns (e.g. Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire) are smaller than some large villages (e.g. Kidlington, Oxfordshire).


title: Town

text: The status of a "city" is reserved for places that have letters patent entitling them to the name, historically associated with the possession of a cathedral. Some large municipalities (such as Northampton and Bournemouth) are legally boroughs but not cities, whereas some cities are quite small — such as Ely or St David's. The city of Brighton and Hove was created from the two former towns and some surrounding villages, and within the city the correct term for the former distinct entities is somewhat unclear.


title: Town

text: It appears that a city may become a town, though perhaps only through administrative error: Rochester in Kent had been a city for centuries but, when in 1998 the Medway district was created, a bureaucratic blunder meant that Rochester lost its official city status and is now technically a town.


title: Town

text: It is often thought that towns with bishops' seats rank automatically as cities: however, Chelmsford was a town until 5 June 2012 despite being the seat of the diocese of Chelmsford, created in 1914. St Asaph, which is the seat of the diocese of St Asaph, only became a city on 1 June 2012 though the diocese was founded in the mid-sixth century. In reality, the pre-qualification of having a cathedral of the established Church of England, and the formerly established Church in Wales or Church of Ireland, ceased to apply from 1888.


title: Town

text: The word "town" can also be used as a general term for urban areas, including cities and in a few cases, districts within cities. In this usage, a city is a type of town; a large one, with a certain status. For example, central Greater London is sometimes referred to colloquially as "London town". (The "City of London" is the historical nucleus, informally known as the "Square Mile", and is administratively separate from the rest of Greater London, while the City of Westminster is also technically a city and is also a London borough.) Camden Town and Somers Town are districts of London, as New Town is a district of Edinburgh – actually the Georgian centre.


title: Town

text: In recent years the division between cities and towns has grown, leading to the establishment of groups like the Centre for Towns, who work to highlight the issues facing many towns. Towns also became a significant issue in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election, with Lisa Nandy making significant reference to Labour needing to win back smaller towns which have swung away from the party.


title: Town

text: A "town" in Scotland has no specific legal meaning and (especially in areas which were or are still Gaelic-speaking) can refer to a mere collection of buildings (e.g. a "farm-town" or in Scots ), not all of which might be inhabited, or to an inhabited area of any size which is not otherwise described in terms such as city, burgh, etc. Many locations of greatly different size will be encountered with a name ending with "-town", "-ton", "-toun" etc. (or beginning with the Gaelic equivalent etc.).


title: Town

text: A burgh (pronounced "burruh") is the Scots' term for a town or a municipality. They were highly autonomous units of local government from at least the 12th century until their abolition in 1975, when a new regional structure of local government was introduced across the country. Usually based upon a town, they had a municipal corporation and certain rights, such as a degree of self-governance and representation in the sovereign Parliament of Scotland adjourned in 1707.


title: Town

text: The term no longer describes units of local government although various claims are made from time to time that the legislation used was not competent to change the status of the Royal Burghs described below. The status is now chiefly ceremonial but various functions have been inherited by current Councils (e.g. the application of various endowments providing for public benefit) which might only apply within the area previously served by a burgh; in consequence a burgh can still exist (if only as a defined geographical area) and might still be signed as such by the current local authority. The word 'burgh' is generally not used as a synonym for 'town' or 'city' in everyday speech, but is reserved mostly for government and administrative purposes.


title: Town

text: Historically, the most important burghs were royal burghs, followed by burghs of regality and burghs of barony. Some newer settlements were only designated as police burghs from the 19th century onward, a classification which also applies to most of the older burghs.


title: Town

text: The definition of "town" varies widely from state to state, and in many states there is no official definition. In some states, the term "town" refers to an area of population distinct from others in some meaningful dimension, typically population or type of government. The characteristic that distinguishes a town from another type of populated place — a city, borough, village, or township, for example — differs from state to state. In some states, a town is an incorporated municipality; that is, one with a charter received from the state, similar to a city (see incorporated town), while in others, a town is unincorporated. In some instances, the term "town" refers to a small incorporated municipality of less than a population threshold specified by state statute, while in others a town can be significantly larger. Some states do not use the term "town" at all, while in others the term has no official meaning and is used informally to refer to a populated place, of any size, whether incorporated or unincorporated. In some other states, the words "town" and "city" are legally interchangeable.


title: Town

text: Small-town life has been a major theme in American literature, especially stories of rejection by young people leaving for the metropolis.


title: Town

text: Since the use of the term varies considerably by state, individual usages are presented in the following sections:


title: Town

text: In Alabama, the legal use of the terms "town" and "city" is based on population. A municipality with a population of 2,000 or more is a city, while less than 2,000 is a town (Code of Alabama 1975, Section 11-40-6). For legislative purposes, municipalities are divided into eight classes based on population. Class 8 includes all towns, plus cities with populations of less than 6,000 (Code of Alabama 1975, Section 11-40-12).