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is our fourth most used tag and is our seventh most used tag. Yet, it would seem to me that they are used interchangeably. I cannot be sure since does not have a tag wiki but, from a quick look at the two, it would seem they are.

If I am right, shouldn't be a synonym of ?

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The tags and are most definitely not synonyms of each other. They should not be merged!

Imagine that grammar is a circle. Everything inside the circle is grammatical and everything outside is not. For example, "Cat dream about chasing mice." is unambiguously and uncontroversially an ungrammatical sentence, and is thus outside the circle. “The cat dreams about chasing mice” is grammatical, and thus inside the circle. The tag encompasses questions about where the boundary between grammatical and ungrammatical is. Here are good examples of questions about grammaticality:

Many questions tagged have nothing to do with the question of whether or not something is grammatical. Instead, questions tagged should be about how the grammar works—questions that ask “what is the structure of the inside of the circle of grammar?” rather than “where does the boundary of the circle of grammar lie?”. Here are some examples of such questions:

These questions aren’t about whether something is grammatical or not—they are about different grammatical usages and how they can be used or what they mean.

Nevertheless, the tag is overused. Many questioners who don’t really know the grammatical terminology specific to their question just tag their question as a kind of default, ignorant of the terminology or topic that would be the best tag for their questions. Many such questions should be retagged , while others should have neither tag, and would be better served by a more specific tag.

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    The first step in avoiding that problem, IMO, is to write a tag wiki for [grammar].
    – Borror0
    Feb 24, 2011 at 19:05
  • @Borror0: we figured as much in chat, and Kosmonaut has created one.
    – RegDwigнt
    Feb 24, 2011 at 20:00
  • I can see why this distinction might be useful. A thing to consider: the definition of "grammar" here prescribed, while not a bad idea, isn't entirely obvious for any random layman: we also use "grammar" to describe the discussion of what is grammatical and what isn't. I do, and I suspect that the posters of the answers below do so too. That is why I fear that this tag rule might not be easy to enforce: most people will probably keep using the "wrong" grammar tag on boundary-defining questions. // Then there is also the blurred distinction between grammaticality and style—complicated stuff.
    – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
    Apr 6, 2011 at 16:39
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In my opinion they would be synonyms.

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  • I also think they should be synonyms. Maybe you could find a way to draw a line, but what's the point? To make the matter so arcane that non-initiates are afraid to ask questions or venture opinions?
    – Greg Lee
    Feb 2, 2015 at 23:00
  • I also agree that they should be synonyms, but I downvoted this answer because you do not give a reason for why they should be synonyms.
    – ahorn
    Oct 26, 2016 at 14:28
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One tag is a synonym for the other tag.

I would rather make a synonym of , as the topic of such questions is the grammaticality of a phrase.

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    I much prefer grammar. It means much the same thing as the longer word, but with 7 fewer letters.
    – Marthaª
    Feb 23, 2011 at 15:22

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