So TIL. I have never heard of this, and I’m not sure if this happens in the U.K… I had always assumed, growing up with feet and inches and metres interchangeably, that area is always stated as the length of the side squared is how it is done. Has this happened as a mis-advertising tactic to make things sound bigger than they are?
I was briefly fascinated by ‘chains’ at school, in the system of rods, links and chains. The idea of chains was you go around the outside of an irregular area and the number of chains related to the area in acres. 1 acre to 10 square chains?