words per minute confusion

[bhuvanesh]

Transatlantic cable in 1880's can transfer 8 words per minute(approx 5bps per second)

I have seen this in video. In general does the the word have any specific bits or the bits of the word change accordingly

 

[(*steve*)]

They literally mean words. The words were encoded as Morse code and sent with dots and dashes having opposite polarity.