Beware of Solitary T Accounts

What is a solitary T Account?
A solitary T account is a standard, go to, textbook answer to the problem of a floating journal entry.
In other words, many textbooks problems will solve the problem of limited space due to the format of the material by making small problems that remove information we often have in real life. For example, the answer to a book problem may be a floating journal entry, a journal entry with no connection to the larger double entry accounting system, not posted to a general ledger, a trial balance, or the financial statements.
When learning accounting concepts, we often have to use floating journal entries, but they are not the best way to study accounting because we cannot relate to the full picture the floating journal entry is a part of.
When explaining the full accounting concept related to a problem that has a floating journal entry as the answer, we often start by telling a story about the accounting transaction in question, and we use a “solitary T account” to help tell the story.
The solitary T account is a good tool when faced with a problem asking for a floating journal entry as the answer, but the solitary T account is generally not enough to fully understand a new concept.
To understand the solitary T account we need to understand how the solitary T account relates to a general ledger account, how the solitary T account is one T account that fits in and relates to a T account for all other accounts, that the T account balances would be used to create a trial balance, and that the trial balance would be used to create the financial statements.
In other words, the Solitary T Account helps to visualize a little more of the story but still leaves a lot we cannot see, a lot we must picture in our minds to understand what is going on, and a lot that we could really us practice on.
Although we may need to use floating journal entries and solitary T accounts on tests and short problems, we want to practice by finding problems that show the full picture so that we can see how the new concept relates to the end product, the financial statements, and get practice seeing and working with these fundamental concepts, concepts that we cannot fully understand by practicing them in Chapter 1 and never returning to them, concepts that we need to drill on with every study session, with every new concept. http://accountinginstruction.info/