A few questions about English grammar

[Bangkeaw]

Hi again everyone!

I have two grammatical questions that have been preying on my mind for ages! Could anybody save me from this on-going frustation please? (:
I will give my questions in filling-in-the-gap form...

1) Someone is getting ? bad news.
choice a: his/her b: their

2) Everybody is good in ? own way.
choice a: his/her b: their

3) Today is January 5.
choice a: fifth b: five

Thank you very much for your invaluable help! I appreciate it (:

[Prezbucky]

I'd go with:

1. his/her (it is singular, matching "someone" -- but pick one, either "his" or "her". Since we don't have a unisex singular pronoun, we have to either offend the more sensitive among us... or match plural with singular, which is illogical.

2. Same as 1 -- singular matches singular

(1/2: "Someone" and "everybody" are both singular.)

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I'm not sure about #3. If you're not using the numeral form, I'd opt for "fifth".
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Bangkeaw]

Thanks a lot Prezbucky! (: It has besome as clear as a bell to me now

[Mister Micawber]

'Their' is the accepted singular gender-neutral pronoun in spoken English, and has been for ages. From the American Heritage Dictionary:

The use of the third-person plural pronoun 'they' to refer to a singular noun or pronoun is attested as early as 1300, and many admired writers have used 'they', 'them', 'themselves', and 'their' to refer to singular nouns such as one, a person, an individual, and each. W.M. Thackeray, for example, wrote in Vanity Fair in 1848, “A person can't help their birth,” and more recent writers such as George Bernard Shaw and Anne Morrow Lindbergh have also used this construction, in sentences such as “To do a person in means to kill them,” and “When you love someone you do not love them all the time.” The practice is widespread and can be found in such mainstream publications as the Christian Science Monitor, Discover, and the Washington Post. The usage is so common in speech that it generally passes unnoticed.
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Canadian-American native speaker
who teaches English for a living at Mister Micawber's
ESL cafe: Interview with Mister Micawber