[thomastjeffery]

You read it correctly. The account's "balance" would be a "credit of $5".

A transaction involves multiple accounts, so it would be written as multiple sentences: "Alice's account has a credit of $7. Bob's account has a debit of $7." If you want to write about the transaction itself, you could do that with a verb: "Transaction #23254 applies a debit of $7 to Bob's account, and a credit of $7 to Alice's account." A double-entry book is just a table with a column for each account, and a column for the date/time each credit or debit was transacted.

The whole point here is that when someone swoops in, every sentence spoken is guaranteed to be unambiguous; no matter what context that someone brings with them. So long as "credit" and "debit" are used exclusively as nouns, there can be no confusion.

[mrkeen]

And here is a comment of mine where the reply states the opposite (I believe):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39993175

[thomastjeffery]

I have no idea why they said that.