Comment by drzaiusx11

Oh, I got the implication, but I think it was such a common mistake back then, that I don't think it's age-related now - it's a bit of a trope, to assume baud and bps mean the same thing, and people tend to prefer to use a more technical term even when it's not fully understood. Hence we are where we are with terms like decimate, myriad, nubile, detox etc, forcefully redefined by common (mis)usage. I need a cup of tea, clearly.

Anyway, I didn't think my throw-away comment would engender such a large response. I guess we're not the only olds around here!

No, just that confusing the two was ubiquitous at the time 14.4k, 28k, and 56k modems were the standard.

Like it was more common than confusing Kbps and KBps.

I mean, the 3.5" floppy disk could store 1.44 MB... and by that people meant the capacity was 1,474,560 bytes = 1.44 * 1024 * 1000. Accuracy and consistency in terminology has never been particularly important to marketing and advertising, except marketing and advertising is exactly where most laypersons first learn technical terms.