Is the phrase The Tortured Poets Department grammatically correct?

Hello. Lots of folks have asked me if the phrase “The Tortured Poets Department,” which is the title of Taylor Swift’s new album, is grammatically correct. Maybe! It might be grammatically correct, but that depends on how she means the phrase. Let’s get into it! IF IT’S CORRECT: If Taylor intends the phrase as a non-possessive plural noun, then she is using the punctuation correctly. In this interpretation, Taylor would need to intend for this Department to be about Tortured Poets, to emphasize them, subject-wise. In this interpretation, The Tortured Poets Department is not a Department of Tortured Poets in the sense that they own it or run it or are even in it. They are the subject, the category. “Tortured Poets” as a concept is the main feature of the department, and the title is a description. Think of it like “Biological Sciences Department” or “Foreign Languages Department.” It’s not “Biological Science’s Department,” or Biological Sciences’ Department,” or “Foreign Language’s Department” or “Foreign Languages’ Department,” all of which suggests that the subject owns a department. (Then again, comparing this fake department title to a real academic department like the aforementioned Sciences or Languages departments is somewhat unhelpful, because most academic departments are less ambiguously named after the subject; in a university, a department such as the one Taylor suggests might be called The Tortured Poetry Department. But Taylor is emphasizing the collective of writers, and their state of being tortured, rather than the work they produce.) In this interpretation, the Poets don’t possess the department the way the Dean might possess an Office. (That would be written as Dean’s Office, or, if, it’s an office for multiple Deans, “Deans’ Office, or if it’s the office of someone named Deans, Deans’s Office). But the office serves the Dean the way the department doesn’t serve the poets. The Poets are, again, the feature and subject of this department, so the phrase is not possessive and therefore doesn’t need an apostrophe. So, in order for the grammar to be correct, in this Department, everyone would study and teach about Tortured Poets, […]

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