Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.
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Question: Possible Duplicate: How to use 'tens of' and 'hundreds of'? Take this example: Hundreds of pieces were used to create it. What if the amount were something like 20 or 30? What would the equivalent sentence be that would sound natural?.

Answer: I confess, my first thought was 'dozens'. While 'tens' is probably more accurate, it doesn't feel as comfortable to say (to me, anyway).


Question: What's the difference between these two phrases?.

Answer: To add to Martha's answer: The simple past ('Did you see this') refers about an event in the past The present perfect ('Have you seen this') suggests a link with the present time. If 'this' is something you could have seen but cannot anymore (you should have been there seeing 'this' at the time, but it wouldn't have the same impact if you see it again now), then 'Did you see' is more appropriate. It is about an event that happened once in the past. If 'this' is something you can check out whenever you want, 'Have you seen' is more to the point, because it suggests that, if you haven't seen it in the past, you could consider seeing it now or in the near future. It is about an event which can happen again or is still relevant in the present.


Question: 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?.

Answer:
I gather from previous answers that there are two ways in which this question can goeither 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.