Categorizing Tactics

The thing with chess is that Strategy generally means long term goal/advantage (usually positional) whereas Tactic generally means immediate advantage/gain (usually material).

I think this is why it is hard to "categorize" all of them into a handful of stuff. With our past discussion I mentioned that the Forks, Skewers, etc...Tactics actually done already but simplifying them by condensing (taxonomy, cataloging, classification, nomenclature, organizing, etc…) even more is not easy to do. Maybe someone might even say unnecessary. Knowing them is just a matter of studying them and then putting them away in your head, because all of those tactics do not come up all the time (only a handful at most per situation). All the things you mentioned and all the things others have said, they all have their place; they are all correct in one way or another. This is chess and this is why chess is so good. It’s an easy game to learn but mastering it is another issue altogether.

I want so say that if you are thinking of it, then it’s been thought of and most likely been done before too. That’s not to say stop thinking; I am all for seeking knowledge.

Some ideas work really well together like the threat of a Fork and Removing the Defender by Clearance, or another tactic. So maybe you can categorize those although I think this is not what you are looking for.

Yasser Seirawans "Winning Chess Tactics" is exactly what you are looking for.

White space please.

Etymology is neat--note that tactics and attack share the same root.  Reinfeld and Chernev's "Winning Chess" is a great tactical tool--though if you're not familiar with descriptive notation you may not like it much.  I don't know, though, it may have been translated to algebraic.

Etymology is downright fascinating.