Just like the "DB9" reference frequently appearing in catalogs, and, of course, in this forum. Everyone who's been around a little while should know by now that it's a DE9, but they understand what's meant by most references, mostly by underinformed ignorami, that a DB9 would be the DB25 shell with only 9 of its positions populated, while the DE9 is the small shell with only 9 positions in it, fully populated.

It's that sort of lassitude that leads, ultimately, to screwups such as the one that set the Galileo probe back several months, because someone failed to understand that the power connector had to be polarized so one couldn't plug it into the wrong socket ... but it wasn't, so it was ... <sigh> ... and it was a JPL engineer who designed in the omission. An error for certain, and not a cheap one. The connector itself was polarized, but since multiple similar connectors were used, they had to be keyed differently so this error could be prevented.

RE