An Accounting Lesson for Twitter

Whether he prevails at his insider-trading trial or winds up paying a fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, performed a mitzvah during his testimony this week when he plainly described to the jury what "Ebitda" is.

"It's a term companies use when they want to make it seem like they're doing better than they are," he said of the oft-cited financial metric, which stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Nice timing, too. Cuban said it right before Twitter Inc. filed the registration statement for its initial public offering.