In this sb's case

Question

I've got a question about English grammar. as I'm not a native English speaker, I have to make some sentences by myself.

Imagine a person has several problems, or cases, and now we are talking about a specific matter. In part of one of my sentences, I've said:

In this Sb's case...

(I was pointing at a particular case)

The most important part of my question is that:

Is it grammatical wrong? Regardless of whether a native would use it or not...

I'll really appreciate your answers.

thank you for responding me back. but sth which I can't understand yet is that do your explanations indicate my phrase being wrong grammatically? — soroush dp, Jun 14 '17 at 11:56

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 07:40

Assuming Sb means somebody, and that somebody has lots of problems, but you wish to talk about just one of those problems, then you would say:

In this [particular] case

or

In that [particular] case

Notes

You would use particular, if you wished to emphasise which of the problems you are referring to.
You don't need to refer to the person's name¹.
This or that - stylistic choice². See "In that case" vs "in this case"

¹ Unless there are a group of people, let's say: John; Fred, and; Pete - and they all have a problem (just one problem for each person, for this example), and you wish to talk about Fred's problem only, then you would say:

In Fred's case

² this if you can point to it, that if it is a metaphorical idea, that you can't physically point at.

In this sb's case

1 Answers1

Notes