Inside the profession, those terms are standard shorthand—efficient, precise and familiar to anyone trained to read them. Outside it, they can sound more like code than communication.

That gap matters as the profession tries to attract students and reassure business audiences that accounting is not only essential, but understandable. Long before newcomers master revenue recognition, lease accounting or stock compensation, they often have to learn a dense vocabulary of acronyms, abbreviations and common words repurposed into technical terms.

Ray Pfeiffer, professor of accounting in the School of Management at Simmons University, said that shorthand exists for a reason. Acronyms and abbreviations, he said, “provide efficient means of communication among experts in a field.”

The problem is that efficiency for insiders can create friction for everyone else.

To dig deeper, visit the original article on the Thomson Reuters blog.