Spelling, punctuation and pronunciation

Trudi Faulkner-Petrova explains the two different ways of pronouncing 'g' in English

Gareth Rees answers a question from Iain Wood in Belgium about the use of apostrophes in some names.

Edwin from The Netherlands and Ourlis from Algeria have questions about apostrophes

Gareth Rees answers a question from Iain Wood in Belgium on the use of apostrophes with names

'When you say Christmas it sounds like /krismas/ and when you say Christchurch for example, it sounds like /kraist/. What's right?'

Carlos from Nicaragua and Imran from Pakistan both want to find out about hyphens

Marcos Alonso from Paraguay asks how he can improve his accent

Gareth Rees answers a question from Marta in Poland and explains how vowel and consonant sounds rather than letters are important in deciding whether to use 'an' or 'a'

Gareth Rees answers a question about when to use its and it's.

Vikram in India wants to know how to improve his accent and sound more British

Yasmeen from Portugal is confused by 'shan't': 'We shan't be able to get into the show.'

Are there really two different pronunciations of 'the'?

Discover the three ways to pronounce '-ed' at the end of words.

How and when do you differentiate the pronunciation of a, an and the?

Find out about rising and falling intonation in question tags.

Learn how to pronounce symbol names and punctuation marks.

Trudi Faulkner-Petrova explains the two different ways of pronouncing 'g' in English

Find out about the relationship between commas in writing and pauses in speaking.

Hany Rengier from Germany always seems to get mixed up between German and English punctuation rules.

Roger Woodham explains punctuation to Chan Ming from Hong Kong

Sometimes we write 'hit - hitting', other times we write 'slide - sliding'. Is there a rule?

Amy Lightfoot answers a question from Mr. Sokhna in Senegal about the pronunciation of dates such as 2009.

Jean-Pierre Michel from Belgium asks: 'I have seen both aging and ageing written and would be grateful to know which is right.'

Zully Ramirez-Gamboa asks Roger Woodham about doubling final consonants and pronunciation

Why are some letters silent, as in 'island'?