In financial markets, a share is a unit of account for various financial instruments including stocks (ordinary or preferential), and investments in limited partnerships, and REIT's. The common feature of all these is equity participation (limited in the case of preference shares).
Shareholders and dividends
The income received from shares is called a dividend, and a person owning shares is called a shareholder.
Valuation
Shares are valued according to various principles in different markets, but a basic premise is that a share is worth the price at which a transaction would be likely to occur were the shares to be sold. The liquidity of markets is a major consideration as to whether a share is able to be sold at any given time. An actual sale transaction of shares between buyer and seller is usually considered to provide the best prima-facie market indicator as to the 'true value' of shares at that particular moment.
Share certificates
Investors were given share certificates as evidence of their ownership of shares but certificates are not always issued nowadays. Instead, the ownership may be recorded electronically by a system such as CREST
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shares
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