What the difference is between those and 'onstage' is unclear. I agree with JamesM, I would never write, 'He walked onboard' or 'He walked offcamera' (though my spellcheck says 'onboard' is okay, while 'offcamera' is not). Speaking-wise, unless I had to specify 'the stage', I will almost always say 'on( )stage' This is all probably just conditioned preferences, as from both this forum and the other reading I've done, there isn't much in terms of set rules differentiating the two. But, to be fair, the sentence in the textbook did catch my attention while proofreading and it was just the one word. To sum, I can't think of a natural situation in which I would write 'on stage' as two words without 'the' in between.

In this case, I've read some arguments that 'onstage' as one word has artistic connotations and should be used mainly when talking about actors or performers and what they do ( Should this sentence take 'on stage' or 'onstage'?) 'She walked onstage' - she came out from behind the curtain to center stage to greet the crowd and begin her performance. 'She walked on stage' - I would reflexively use the when writing (speaking would just simply be 'on( )stage' unless specification was needed, I'd say due to pacing and speed of speech vs writing) and would mean she was already in front of the audience and walking around. Similarly, in the ngram mentioned by JungKim, the subtle difference between 'onstage' and 'on stage,' as I would naturally interpret it, would be: That is, I feel that I would use 'onstage' unless I needed to use 'on the stage.' prepositions, it's not really an adverb, though, and more just a preposition without, or with an implied, object (that's a whole argument, apparently: Preposition or Adverb?).īut I think you could just as easily argue for 'Gloria sat on stage.' In the 'on stage' use, the 'on' of course is a preposition with the object 'stage,' and it seems to me that the main difference would be if I wanted to call emphasis to the stage itself. In this case, it seems that 'onstage', as one word, acts as an adverb modifying 'sat' (much like 'inside' in the phrase 'Get inside!' acts like an adverb to modify 'get'). Using the sentence: 'Gloria sat onstage.' (This sentence is from a Harcourt Trophies story, 'Officer Buckle and Gloria', published 2007 in the USA). Hi there, not to beat a dead horse, but I just wanted to share the conundrum I've come across with 'on stage' vs 'onstage.'

On stage vs onstage