Did Taylor Swift Make a Punctuation Error in Her Album Title? Here’s My Ruling as a Copy Editor.

On Sunday, as she accepted her Best Pop Vocal Album Grammy for Midnights, Taylor Swift made the surprise announcement that in April she would be releasing a new album, The Tortured Poets Department. In no time, X was atwitter with the news. Fans and critics alike fiercely debated not only the timing and venue of the announcement but also the album art, the title—and even the lack of punctuation.

“Poets Department”? Was that … right? Or was there a missing apostrophe?

The ears of a million copy editors—of both the professional and armchair varieties—immediately perked up. It should be The Tortured Poets’ Department, with an apostrophe, clamored (or lightly questioned) one contingent. As if Swift would make a punctuation error, clamored the other. (Hmm.) A professor even used the news as an opportunity to teach her students about apostrophe usage.

“I thought her point was that being a poet means resisting ownership,” noted one X user. “Maybe it is the beginning of her anarchy era.”

Here is my ruling, as a professional copy editor: The album punctuation is fine as is. There are differing schools of thought on this, depending on what style guide you’re following (and persuasive arguments to be made either way), but according to the style guidance of both Slate and the Associated Press, the word poets is functioning here as a descriptive, not possessive, modifier of department. That is, you could think of this academic department as one for tortured poets. It’s a department that contains those poets, but, as most English majors can attest, it’s not actually owned by those poets. Individual poets cycle through; the department endures. Even for those who have tenure, the hope is that the institution will outlast them.

Similar types of constructions include actors strike, couples therapy, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, farmers market, teachers college, writers room. With a possessive phrase, conversely, there’s the implication of ownership: children’s hospital, the Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce, doctor’s office, driver’s license, people’s republic, women’s rights, workers’ compensation.

Is there room in some of those examples to make the case either way? You bet! Does that ambiguity fill you with angst when all you really wanted was a decisive ruling so you could be morally superior and unburdened by nuance? Well, sorry, but welcome to copy editing. It is, at the end of the day, an art.

Though now that we’ve established that the title The Tortured Poets Department is structurally A-OK, I do have some punctuation and usage quibbles with the track list. “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)” could use some commas to set off really. There’s a similar comma absence in “But Daddy I Love Him.” And this may grate to some ears, but “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys”—unless the titular boy performs absolutely no other actions in his life, e.g., breathing, eating, socializing—would be more accurate if rendered “My Boy Breaks Only His Favorite Toys.” (I do realize, however, that I’m sort of a dinosaur on that point, and poetry is poetry.) Finally, I’m trying to get over my aversion to comma splices, especially in casual dialogue, but “I love you, it’s ruining my life” is testing me. Tortured Poets Department, I hope you’re taking applications.