I managed to get my question answered on StackExchange [1]. It seems the solution is to turn off org-agenda-search-headline-for-time. Would it be possible to add a footnote to the time of day specification manual page [2] indicating that this is the variable that controls whether org-agenda scans headlines for timestamps in plain text? Right now, unless you already know that that variable exists, you have no idea what to look for in order to turn this feature off.

[1]: https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/41203/how-do-i-escape-a-time-in-a-todo-entry-so-that-it-doesnt-show-up-on-the-time
[2]: https://orgmode.org/manual/Time_002dof_002dday-specifications.html#Time_002dof_002dday-specifications

On Apr 24, 2018, at 2:11 PM, Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> wrote:

Hello,

Rohit Patnaik <quanticle@quanticle.net> writes:

Hello,

According to the org-mode manual:

In the headline of the entry itself, a time(range) may also appear as plain text (like ‘12:45’ or a ‘8:30-1pm’).

Is it possible to "escape" this text so that strings like that are
*not* interpreted as times or time ranges? Failing that, is it
possible to disable the interpretation of plain text as time ranges?
I have entries that have "time-like" strings, (ie. things like 7:16)
that should not be interpreted as a timestamp. However, when I display
such entries in org-agenda, these entries are displayed with a time
prefix, which results in the text appearing garbled.

It might be possible with a zero width space near the colons.

Regards,

--
Nicolas Goaziou