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A sett, usually referred to in the plural and known in some places as a Belgian block, is a broadly rectangular quarried stone used for paving roads, Formerly in more widespread use, it is now encountered more as a decorative stone paving in landscape architecture. Setts are often idiomatically referred to as "cobbles", although a sett is distinct from a cobblestone by being quarried or shaped to a regular form, whereas the latter is generally of a naturally occurring form.

Streets paved with setts are highlights in several cycling competitions such as the final Champs-Élysées stage of the Tour de France and the Paris–Roubaix road race. Riding upon sett is technically more challenging than riding on asphalt.

Notable places paved with setts include Vicars' Close, Wells, much of Edinburgh's Old Town and New Town, Red Square in Moscow and the Granada TV set of Coronation Street.

In New York City the meat-packing district and SoHo retain such streets.

Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia, in particular its upper reaches through Germantown, Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill, is notable for being paved with Belgian blocks; repaving projects on this thoroughfare have retained or reintroduced setts to give additional historic character to these neighborhoods. Part of this character includes the tracks of the 23 trolley, though the modern tracks are encased in concrete slabs rather than setts, and the trolley line itself is currently operated by buses.

Permeable paving is a range of sustainable materials and techniques for permeable pavements with a base and subbase that allow the movement of stormwater through the surface. In addition to reducing runoff, this effectively traps suspended solids and filters pollutants from the water. Examples include roads, paths, lawns and lots that are subject to light vehicular traffic, such as car/parking lots, cycle-paths, service or emergency access lanes, road and airport shoulders, and residential sidewalks and driveways.

Although some porous paving materials appear nearly indistinguishable from nonporous materials, their environmental effects are qualitatively different. Whether pervious concrete, porous asphalt, paving stones or concrete or plastic-based pavers, all these pervious materials allow stormwater to percolate and infiltrate the surface areas, traditionally impervious to the soil below. The goal is to control stormwater at the source, reduce runoff and improve water quality by filtering pollutants in the substrata layers.

The term hard landscape is used by practitioners of landscape architecture and garden design to describe the construction materials which are used to improve a landscape by design. The corresponding term soft landscape materials is used to describe plant materials. A wide range of hard landscape materials can be used, such as brick, gravel, rock or stone, concrete, timber, bitumen, glass, metals, etc. 'Hard landscape' can also describe outdoor furniture and other landscape products.

The plural is one of the categories of grammatical number in many languages. Plural forms of nouns typically denote a quantity other than the default quantity represented by a noun, which is generally one (the form that represents this default quantity is said to be of singular number). Most commonly, therefore, plurals are used to denote two or more of something, although they may also denote fractional, zero or negative amounts. An example of a plural is the English word cats, which is derived from the singular cat.

Plurality is a linguistic universal, represented variously among the languages as a separate word, an affix, or by other morphological indications such as stress or implicit markers/context.

Words of other types, such as verbs, adjectives and pronouns, also frequently have distinct plural forms, which are used in agreement with the number of their associated nouns.

Some languages also have a dual (denoting exactly two of something) or other systems of number categories. However in English and many other languages, singular and plural are the only grammatical numbers, except for possible remnants of the dual in pronouns such as both and either.