The Festival Poster Punctuation Dispute
A school drama club has produced a poster for its spring production. The committee argues over the final line, which currently reads: Come see our new play 'The Glass Harbour' Friday 12 May 7 pm doors open 6:30. Three members propose different versions. Alina wants: Come and see our new play, 'The Glass Harbour', on Friday 12 May. Doors open at 6:30 pm; the performance begins at 7 pm. Boris wants: Come see our new play "The Glass Harbour" Friday 12 May 7 pm doors open 6:30. Chen wants: Come see our new play - 'The Glass Harbour' - Friday 12 May, 7 pm. Doors open 6:30. The club has 40 posters already printed with the original line and a budget that allows only one reprint. The head teacher will only approve text that is fully punctuated and unambiguous about the start time.
1. Which proposal should the club send for reprinting, and why do the other two fail the head teacher's two conditions?
Read the worked answer
Alina's version is the only one that satisfies both conditions.
Condition 1 - fully punctuated. Alina separates the main clause from the play title with commas, closes the title with a matching comma, ends the sentence with a full stop, and uses a semicolon to join two closely related independent clauses. Boris keeps no comma around the title, no punctuation between the date and the time, and no full stop; it is a run-on string of noun phrases. Chen's dashes around the title are acceptable in British usage, but he then writes Friday 12 May, 7 pm with a comma where a preposition or a full stop is needed, and he never closes the second sentence properly.
Condition 2 - unambiguous start time. The original line lets 7 pm attach either to the performance or to the doors. Alina removes the ambiguity explicitly: Doors open at 6:30 pm; the performance begins at 7 pm. Boris and Chen both leave 7 pm and doors open 6:30 in a flat sequence, so a reader can still misread which is the start.
Since only one reprint is affordable, the club should send Alina's wording.
2. A member objects that single quotation marks are 'wrong' for a play title. How should the club respond, given that the poster is for a British-style school and the title already sits inside a sentence?
Read the worked answer
The objection confuses two separate conventions.
Titles. British practice commonly uses single quotation marks for the titles of plays, poems, and short works, reserving italics (or underlining in handwriting) for long works such as novels and films. Double quotation marks are the American default. Neither is 'wrong'; the club should simply be consistent across the poster.
Nesting. The relevant rule is about quotation marks inside quotation marks. If the whole line were itself quoted - for example, a reviewer writing The poster says, "Come and see 'The Glass Harbour'" - the inner title would switch to single marks. On the poster, the title is not inside another quotation, so single marks are free to serve as the title marks.
Practical answer. Keep Alina's single marks, apply them to the title only, and make sure the same style appears on the tickets and the programme. Consistency, not the choice between single and double, is what the head teacher can actually enforce.