Units of measurement in France before the French Revolution (league) had a number of variations, particularly the "aune" (which was used to measure cloth The "loi du 19 frimaire an VIII" (Law of 10 December 1799) states that one decimal metre is exactly 443.296 French lines, or "3 pieds 11.296 lignes de la "Toise du Pérou"". Thus the French royal foot is exactly 9000/27,706 metres (about 0.3248 m). In Quebec, the surveys in French units were converted using the relationship 1 "pied" (of the French variety, the same word being used for English feet as well) = 12.789 English inches. This makes the Quebec "pied" very slightly smaller (about
Pied-piping Pied-piping in English is optional with many prepositions ("in", "of", "on", "to", "with", etc.). Colloquial registers prefer to avoid pied-piping whenever possible, whereas a more formal register can opt for pied-piping. The issue is understood in terms of preposition stranding. When a preposition is stranded, pied-piping has not occurred, whereas when preposition stranding is avoided, pied-piping of the preposition has occurred, e.g. The debate surrounding the stylistic acceptability of preposition stranding can hence be illuminated by an understanding of pied-piping. Broadly construed, pied-piping occurs in other types of discontinuities beyond wh-fronting, that is, if one views just part of a