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A friend posed the following word puzzle to me:

Can you think of a sentence that keeps the same meaning whether you use "it's" or "its"?

He asserted that this puzzle does in fact have a solution. However, it has me completely stumped. I tried to solve an easier problem, to find a sentence which is still grammatical if you change an "its" to "it's", but all I could come up with is examples like "It's light!" (which is, strictly, more of a sentence fragment).

What is the solution to the word puzzle? Or, is there some way I can "prove" that the puzzle should have no solution?

nneonneo
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    How bout your and you're, their and they're? Same structures, after all. – John Lawler Jul 26 '14 at 20:20
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    If you could find a solution for those word pairs, then it should be possible to adjust the solution to use "it's"/"its", right? – nneonneo Jul 26 '14 at 20:24
  • Related:http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/13148/why-is-there-a-distinction-between-its-and-its –  Jul 26 '14 at 20:33
  • Without changing the meaning? That seems a sstretch. How about just both grammatical? – Mitch Jul 26 '14 at 20:55
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    The boxed sentence in your question is already an example. – guest Jul 26 '14 at 21:07
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    This question appears to be off-topic because it’s included its own answer in the very question itself, and therefore no further answer is required given the existence proof embedded in the question. – tchrist Jul 26 '14 at 21:31
  • Well, it works with single characters, at least, if not with words:

    How many Rs are in this sentence? How many R's are in this sentence?

     – Drew Jul 27 '14 at 02:10
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    @guest: that sentence doesn't use "it's" or "its" at all, it mentions them ;-) But more to the point, the sentence only keeps its meaning if you change both, not if you change one. So it doesn't keep its meaning whether you use "it's" or "its", it keeps its meaning provided you have exactly one of each. The questioner has changed the puzzle in transcribing it to the question title. – Steve Jessop Jul 27 '14 at 14:43
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    @nneonneo I’ve been thinking about your question, and I have an idea I would like you to please consider. I believe that finding a sentence where swapping its/yours/theirs for it’s/your’s/their’s does not change its meaning is not what you need to prove that this problem is unsolvable by simple spellchecking software. Rather, I believe what you need is a sentence where that change produces a valid sentence whose meaning is *different*. After all, if the meaning doesn’t change, then it wouldn’t matter how it is spelled. Only spelling changes that change meaning matter. See? – tchrist Jul 27 '14 at 21:15
  • I've this suspicion that, once you ask your friend for a spoiler, you will get an answer similar to one of the famous g-r-y riddles. http://www.fun-with-words.com/word_gry_angry_hungry.html. It is a riddle after all. – cobaltduck Jul 28 '14 at 16:27
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    Humorously enough, my friend decided to tell me the answer he had in mind just recently, but now the question is closed. His answer actually does not seem like a trick to me, surprisingly. – nneonneo Jul 28 '14 at 17:22
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    With 21 upvotes and quite a lively discussion resulting from your question, I think closing the question was, at the very least, misguided. – EM Fields Jul 28 '14 at 23:07
  • Thank God this question was closed. EM puzzles and discussion (however humorous/enjoyable) are just not suitable here. it's like putting "code golf" questions on a software engineering site. By all means, someone should launch a "word puzzles" site. – Fattie Jul 29 '14 at 09:54
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    Nice censorship here. :-/ – Nicolas Barbulesco Jul 31 '14 at 18:06
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    A new question arrived, “For all it's worth” or “for all its worth”? which probably has a solution to this: "Milk it for all its worth." and "Milk it for all it's worth." can be used to mean just about the same thing. – Joshua Taylor Aug 14 '14 at 15:18

14 Answers14

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The following took me about two minutes, so I wouldn't be surprised if it can be improved:

"I can never remember what kind of fruit the tree in my garden has - until I look out of the window and see it[']s apples."

  • And when you think of the version with the apostrophe, are you thinking of the sentence "I can never remember what kind of fruits the tree in my garden has - until I look out of the window and see it is apples." or something that actually makes grammatical sense? – Pharap Jul 27 '14 at 17:27
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    For what it’s worth, I think this answer is clever and I enjoyed reading it. I prefer the looser solution to the rigid but boring ones. – user77595 Jul 28 '14 at 00:07
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    @user77595 Wait, was the 'for all it's worth' intentional? If so, that was probably the cleverest comment in this thread. If not, I shall point out that the 'it's' in 'for all it's worth' can easily be replaced with an 'its' without changing the meaning. – Max Jan 17 '19 at 14:25
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I gather from previous answers that there are two ways in which this question can go—either we interpret it strictly, and don't make assumptions about what it's asking, or we interpret it loosely.

If we interpret it loosely, we can bend the rules a bit:

  • As in the Hans Adler's answer, which I was picking on earlier, we can interpret "same meaning" more loosely. In this case, the solution works well (and I'm sure there are more that work even better) wherein one sentence indicates that you see the tree's apples, and one indicates you see that the fruit which the tree bears is the apple. We can also use a construction (I took this idea from another answer) like:

    "I cannot comprehend it's red." = "I cannot comprehend its red."

  • A sneaky solution can be to put "its" and "it's" in quotes in the sentence, to come up with something like:

    "I wrote a sentence with 'it's' and 'its' in it." = "I wrote a sentence with 'its' and 'it's' in it."

  • We can spell something incorrectly, as Hans Adler ironically points out in the most downvoted answer.

  • Or, as my girlfriend suggested, we can replace the "it" in the contraction "it's" with a proper noun (like that clever guy Stephen King did), making "it's" refer to something that belongs to someone or something named It. In this case the solution becomes again trivial, since "its" is also a possessive.

    "This clown is named It. It's nose is red." = "This clown is named It. Its nose is red"

(we sadly, in the last case, refer to a clown as an object, but it does have the same meaning)

Alternatively

All of these answers, to me, are trivial and make the puzzle somewhat boring. If we don't want the puzzle to be boring, we can't cut corners. In this case, as a few have pointed out, it is most likely impossible.

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    Making "it's" refer to something that belongs to "it" by forcing "`s" to function as a suffix denoting possession in singular noun is indeed a smart solution. And I believe it is the only solution in which the two sentences will have the exact same meaning. – Archy Will He 何魏奇 Jul 26 '14 at 21:52
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    The clown solution is certainly the best so far. Maybe make it a clown doll so it is the right pronoun? Or another variant: "The name of Santa's little known second reindeer is It. It[']s nose is as red as Rudolph's." –  Jul 26 '14 at 21:57
  • But I note that the re-interpretation of it's involves some cheating on roughly the same level as the downvoted solution: The question asks for it's, not It's. –  Jul 26 '14 at 22:04
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    A solid answer and +1 for that. I would add another possibility of cutting corners: going further back. I.e. making use of the fact that the riddle fails to specify we have to use contemporary orthography. The original spelling of its is it's, and indeed just half a dozen decades ago or so that was very much the only spelling that was taught as correct. Its without an apostrophe is a very recent invention. (Look no further than Jane Austen to find things like her's and your's, too.) – RegDwigнt Jul 26 '14 at 23:02
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    "Its nose is red" does not have the same meaning as "It's nose is red". "Its nose is red" means something more : that the clown is a thing and not a person. – Nicolas Barbulesco Jul 27 '14 at 13:27
  • @RegDwigнt — This is interesting. Do you have some example of “its” written “it’s” at a recent time when it was correct ? – Nicolas Barbulesco Jul 27 '14 at 13:32
  • Obviously, if we interpret the puzzle and the definition of "same meaning" very strictly, the puzzle negates itself: you cannot add, change, or remove any word from any sentence without also in some way, however minutely, changing its meaning. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 27 '14 at 16:19
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    I wouldn't say it's surely impossible until someone proves it. I think it's possible to change words in a sentence and keep the same meaning, you just have to be clever and most likely have a more complex sentence. Already, if we have a list of things, changing their order is possible without changing the meaning, so you see, it's not super farfetched: "I cannot comprehend its red and I cannot comprehend it's red." –  Jul 27 '14 at 17:14
  • I would say that's arguing from a ‘looser’ definition of sameness, too. In the strictest sense, I'd say even just changing the order of list elements minutely changes the nuance of the sentence and its impact on the listener. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 27 '14 at 21:19
  • Maybe this is getting off topic, but I think there's a difference between "meaning" and "nuance" or "impact." If x + y = 12, x + y is a different way to say 12. They have the exact same value, but different nuances and impacts on the reader. Even if it's not the same in English, I think most can accept the value as its "meaning," and put style and other elements in other categories. (edit: but I see that this is no place for such discussion. Perhaps we take it somewhere else?) –  Jul 27 '14 at 21:25
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    Another technique for your list: have other words in the sentence that can change grammatical rôle. Steve Bennett’s answer gives an example which changes meaning, but is at least grammatical both ways: “I want to hold the cat before it[’]s shot.” I can’t quite see how to adapt this to one without a change of meaning, but it seems hopeful! – PLL Jul 28 '14 at 10:45
  • I don't think the "comprehend" sentences have even close to equivalent meanings. The first one (with the apostrophe) seems downright ungrammatical to me; perhaps "I cannot comprehend that it's red" might work, but I can't fathom what that sentence would mean. The second one clearly means that the speaker can't comprehend the redness of something, which is completely nonsensical but at least appears meaningful in some way. I do not see how the sentence "I cannot comprehend that it is red" (much less the original version with the contraction) could share that meaning, though. – Kyle Strand Jul 28 '14 at 15:54
  • Okay, I suppose one could be unable to see the color red and therefore unable to comprehend it, so the second version isn't quite "completely nonsensical," but it's certainly odd (to me, at least) to call out a specific instance of the color red as being incomprehensible. I suppose the first sentence, without "that," seems ungrammatical to me simply because I've never heard or seen "comprehend" introduce a subjunctive clause before, so it's unclear to me what the function of the "it's" is without either adding "that" or switching to the infinitive mood: "I can't comprehend it to be red." – Kyle Strand Jul 28 '14 at 16:01
  • In other words, I suppose it's not technically ungrammatical as such even from a pretty pedantic/prescriptivist perspective (since "that" is not generally considered necessary for subjunctive clauses), but it's awkward to the point of confusion to my ears. But again, even with the "it's red" interpreted as a subjunctive clause that somehow forms the object of the verb "comprehend," I can't think of a reasonable interpretation for the sentence. I suppose you could stick a "why" in there, but then it would still be quite different from the second sentence (and from its original form). – Kyle Strand Jul 28 '14 at 16:04
  • What are you on about, man? –  Jul 28 '14 at 16:04
  • @KyleStrand — There is no subjunctive here. – Nicolas Barbulesco Jul 31 '14 at 18:13
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    @NicolasBarbulesco Wow. Yes. Correct. I meant "subordinate." Sorry. – Kyle Strand Jul 31 '14 at 18:17
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Well I came up with two strategies:

1) find descriptive adjectives for X that also, as a noun, are what X is:

I wait at the light until I see it's/its green.

I examine the shirt and notice it's/its cotton.

2) shift the referent of 'it', without changing the practical meaning:

That thing that every family wants, it's/its happiness.

The thing that excites me the most when I see a work of art, it's/its beauty.

Neil W
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This is what I can think of...

Although he has read about the color of blood being red, being a visually impaired person since birth, he cannot comprehend it[']s red. Why can't it be blue or something?

But the two sentences have slightly different meanings. One is that he cannot comprehend the fact of blood being red, the other is that he cannot comprehend the color of blood, red.

Archy Will He 何魏奇
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There's a very obvious solution. Here's the question:

Can you think of a sentence that keeps the same meaning whether you use "it's" or "its"?

And here is the answer:

Can you think of a sentence that keeps the same meaning whether you use "its" or "it's"?

gnasher729
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What can you tell me about the state of the golf place? Its green, it's green. It's green, its green.

user86482
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I don't have a complete answer, but what about a sentence like "I want to hold the cat before its/it's shot." That is, pairing "its [noun]" with "it is [past participle]".

Also pointing out that in some Englishes, you could interpret "it's" as "it has".

EDIT

Or a slightly more grammatically correct variation on Hans Adler's: "It's not architecture that makes this town special, but something different: It[']s community".

To me, that scans very naturally with or without the apostrophe, and the difference in meaning is only very subtle. (Replacing 'community' with 'people' reads even better but the difference is greater.)

Another solution:

"Is it the monster's treasure or something different that you crave? It[']s treasure."

Again, both versions read very well for me, and minimal difference in meaning.

Steve Bennett
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I can think of something the same as you.

"I see a fruit bowl and it[']s orange"

ZenLogic
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I liked the smell of the cooked meat until I noticed (it's/its) fat.

:)

       

Nicolas Barbulesco
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CodeAngry
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  • meat is fat v. meat has fat? very different –  Jul 28 '14 at 15:31
  • To be fair, it's for it has is about as standard as he's for he has. –  Jul 28 '14 at 16:18
  • @HansAdler It is fat. Who ever said it has? Mean is lean, mean is fat... it's used like this in English, right? - Non native speaker... wouldn't know. – CodeAngry Jul 28 '14 at 19:21
  • @CodeAngry: That was obviously a response to djechlin's objection. "It is fat" = "The meat is fat". "Its [= the meat's] fat" = The meat has fat. I merely pointed out that "It's fat" has an alternative reading as "It has fat" = "The meat has fat", in which case the meanings are not so "very different", after all. –  Jul 28 '14 at 19:46
  • @djechlin — A food having fat and a food being fat : there is no difference. – Nicolas Barbulesco Jul 31 '14 at 18:17
  • @NicolasBarbulesco no, lard is fat. Beef has fat. –  Aug 03 '14 at 04:00
  • @djechlin - Beef has fat, hence beef is fat. – Nicolas Barbulesco Aug 04 '14 at 16:29
  • @NicolasBarbulesco that's... false. I have a watch. I am not a watch. I have legs. I am not legs. I have hair. I am not hair. What? –  Aug 05 '14 at 00:32
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    @djechlin I would try to explain why fat works in this context and watch is... not a smart example but I can easily tell I'd be wasting my time. When you call a person fat... I bet you mean "HE IS FAT!". – CodeAngry Aug 05 '14 at 09:01
  • @CodeAngry He is the adjective fat, not the noun fat. Helped you out there. –  Aug 05 '14 at 14:53
  • @CodeAngry food cannot be the adjective fat like people can. That makes no sense. They can only be the noun fat, and that's stretching the definition of "food" to include what amount to ingredients that are inedible by themselves. One might say butter is fat, as a slight exaggeration, to make a point. –  Aug 05 '14 at 14:54
  • @CodeAngry you might also indulge in metonymy if you are implicitly asserting that the only important aspect of butter is its fat content, therefore butter is fat. (And bread is a carbohydrate, meat is protein, etc.) –  Aug 05 '14 at 14:55
  • @HansAdler yes but not in this context. I agree with you but presently I can't think of an example of "it's" = "it has", but I can't read this sentence and assume that interpretation. –  Aug 05 '14 at 14:59
0

Here’s an example sentence meeting your criterion:

I can’t figure out how to use the word it’s correctly.

Edit because "the word" is causing issue with some people:

I can't figure out how to use it's properly.

I can't figure out whether to use its or it's in this context.

Community
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SrJoven
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    Indeed, you can't figure. "It's" is not a word, they are two words. – Nicolas Barbulesco Jul 27 '14 at 13:36
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    @NicolasBarbulesco Nonsense: it’s isn’t two words. – tchrist Jul 27 '14 at 14:05
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    A variant that avoids some of the quibbles: “I never know when to put an apostrophe in its.” – PLL Jul 27 '14 at 22:05
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    @tchrist A contraction is a shortening of a word or a combination of words, but I see nothing in the definitions of either "word" or of "contraction" that suggests that shortening "it is" to "it's" changes the number of words, so it seems as if "it's" would still be two words. That said, I cannot find any source that explicitly states it doesn't change the number of words either, so you may still be right. Do you have any source? – hvd Jul 28 '14 at 09:41
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    That said, this answer still doesn't work (unlike @PLL's variant): knowing how to use "its" correctly and knowing how to use "it's" correctly are two different things. Someone who has just started learning English may be learning to use "it is" correctly, and to shorten it to "it's", yet not have covered the word "its" yet. In that context, the meaning does change if "it's" is changed to "its". – hvd Jul 28 '14 at 09:53
  • ("it's" is of course one word.) it's absurd this answer was downvoted as it's the only one close to the correct answer. – Fattie Jul 28 '14 at 12:09
  • Stack Exchange: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/80635/counting-contractions-as-one-or-two-words WikiPedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraction_(grammar) Cambridge: https://www.teachers.cambridgeesol.org/ts/exams/generalenglish/fce/faqs – SrJoven Jul 28 '14 at 13:53
  • But then again, the comment that the question answers itself is adequate, right? – SrJoven Jul 28 '14 at 14:13
  • hi @kvd regarding this whole ridiculous page, I already gave the correct answer. it's like user's but more anal: "There are two words which use the identical letters and letter-ordering of 'its'". If you swap between it's and its, the sentence means absolutely the same thing. the smart ass version is just "There are two words "its"" or easy as pie "There are two its in English". (Incredibly, not that it matters, the only correct answer here was voted down by someone who didn't realise the answer was an answer) This whole page needs to be erased from existence, pls vote to close – Fattie Jul 28 '14 at 15:42
  • @user2370114 Thank you, it seems like there is disagreement, so everybody can be right some of the time. :) And to JoeBlow: Please calm down. "Of course" is not a valid argument. What may be obvious to you, will not be obvious to everyone, and (speaking from experience) what may be obvious to you, could even sometimes be incorrect. – hvd Jul 29 '14 at 21:30
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By stripping "its"' and "it's" of their meanings, "'Its' is a word." and "'It's' is a word." both seem to work.

EM Fields
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    This is correct BUT the sentences have different meanings. If you want to be a smartass it's more like "two words have three letters in the order seen in 'its'" if you change between its/it's the meaning is absolutely, unequivocally, metaphysically the same – Fattie Jul 28 '14 at 12:14
  • "It's" is not a word. These are two words. – Nicolas Barbulesco Jul 28 '14 at 12:48
  • @Nicolas: "It's" is the contraction of two words and, as such, can be considered to be a single word. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraction_(grammar): "In traditional grammar, contraction can denote the formation of a new word from one word or a group of words, for example, by elision." The elision, in this case, being the omission of the second 'i', which rendered a new, monosyllabic word. – EM Fields Jul 28 '14 at 22:16
  • @Joe Blow: I disagree in that I don't see different meanings since the adjective, "word" is stripping 'its' and 'it's' of their meanings by describing them both as just words. Perhaps, had I written: " 'Its' / 'it's' is a word." my meaning would have been made less confusing. – EM Fields Jul 28 '14 at 22:51
  • Hi EM. "Ford is a car" "Chevy is a car" They are different sentences with different meanings. – Fattie Jul 29 '14 at 09:53
  • @EMFields — There is no adjective here. – Nicolas Barbulesco Jul 31 '14 at 18:03
0

Can you replace "I'm" with "My" and retain the same meaning in a sentence, without rewording?

No.

"It's" is the third person form of "I'm". They are contractions of "It is" and "I am" respectively. "Its" is the third person form of "My".

Similarly, "You're" and "Your" are the second person forms respectively.

"They're and "Their" are the third person plural forms respectively.

RBZ
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There are two words "its."

Note that that sentence is the answer.

or you could say

There are two "its" in English.

or even

There are two words like "its" which use the identical letters in the identical order.

Andrew Leach
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Fattie
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'It's just what its supposed to be.' or 'Its just what it's supposed to be.'

user3847
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    Neither of those makes any sense or is grammatical… – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 26 '14 at 20:38
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    Somewhat counterintuitively, this is actually a clever solution to the problem that involves only very little cheating. Misspelled sentences can still be grammatical and have meaning when the intended words can be unambiguously identified, as in this case. Correct spelling was not explicitly part of the puzzle's specification. Therefore every sentence in which regardless of spelling only one of the words makes sense, can be considered to technically provide a solution. (I hope I don't have to explain why it's cheating, as this is quite tricky.) –  Jul 26 '14 at 21:16
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    It has meaning, but surely is not grammatical. – Ben Voigt Jul 27 '14 at 06:40