The reason why you shouldn’t say “the reason why”

I want to write about this piece by Bill McKibbon that Alternet’s posted but “the reason why” I haven’t yet is I can’t get past the headline:

The Surprising Reason Why Americans Are So Lonely, and Why Future Prosperity Means Socializing with Your Neighbors

The “reason why” I can’t get past it is that the editors should know better than to write "the reason why.”  It’s redundant.

A why is a reason and a reason is a why.

You don’t need both.

It’s as bad as writing “the reason is because”.  It’s the same as writing “the reason is because”.

The Surprising Reason Americans are So Lonely is fine.

The reason why the lab blew up is that somebody forgot to turn off his Bunsen Burner.

The reason why I stopped you, sir, is you caused windows to shatter when you broke the sound barrier coming around that turn back there.

The reason why I’m wide awake and giving lectures on grammar and usage at two in the morning is that I made the mistake of drinking a Red Bull on top of six cups of coffee.

Take the whys out those sentences and not only do they still parse, they flow better because the drawn-out crying sound that a why makes is gone.  You don’t have to pause to comfort it.  Whys force an emphasis on themselves that stop sentences in their tracks.

Go ahead.  Re-read those sentences without the whys.

See what I mean?

More to the point, do you hear what I mean?

The reason I’m bothering you with this is that I’m a pompous and pedantic ass.

The reason you’re reading it is unfathomable.

Comments

[Nancy Nall]

I welcome you in this lonely quest to stamp out this irritating redundancy. Now, onward to "the fact that!"

[Rana]

I suspect it's because they want to write "Why Americans are..." but can't figure out how to get that "surprising" in there without adding an extraneous "reason."

(I'm a bit amused that you saw "why" as redundant, while I fixated on "the surprising reason.")

[DaveH]

Do you work for the Department of Redundancy Department?

[KLG]

Hey, the first thing I thought of was "The Reason Why" by Cecil Woodham-Smith. I read it the first quarter of my freshman year in college many years ago, it's perhaps the definitive history of the Charge of the Light Brigade. If it's the fact that an eminent historian of Victorian Britain can use the phrase, it's OK with me, redundancy and all.

[Lance]

KLG, Woodham-Smith was playing off of Tennyson's "Theirs not to reason why./Theirs but to do or die..." But eminent though he was, he was still wrong, because in that line "reason" is a verb. He should have titled his book "Reasoning Why".

Warned ya I'm a pompous pedant.

DaveH, that is my job that I am employed to do when I work at the place where I am employed to do the work I do when I do my job.

[KLG]

Duh, Lance, about the Tennyson. Too tired this evening and a little slower on the uptake than usual. And I even have a recording of Tennyson reciting "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (Poetry on Record, highly recommended). It's scratchy but decipherable and pretty damn cool to listen to. Thank you, Thomas Edison. Being an academic type myself, pedantry does have its place...someone has to uphold standards! Drives my students nuts when I insist on the proper terminology. Keep up the good work (and thanks for directing me to Nancy Nall...can't get through the week without her, either). Oh, and BTW, "Cecil" is a girl's name this time, just so you know in the future when you want to recommend her book to someone curious about where Cardigan and Raglan sleeves came from.

[Matt Zoller Seitz]

David Mamet once described unnecessary exposition as, "Here we go to the bottom of the staircase that we're trying to get to the bottom of."

[Captain Obiligatory]

The explanation for my having read this was on account of because I thought there might be a good punchline coming.

In view of the fact that inasmuch as there wasn't one, I consequently therefore have nothing of substantial merit, magnitude or significance to add.

[Mark]

"The reason why" might be redundant, but I suspect that it is not wrong, if you define "right" as what most educated people say. Proper English is not determined by a set of logical rules. It's determined by how people speak it. And based on a very crude measure (Google searches for the phrase "the reason why" and "the reason that") it appears that "the reason why" is used about ten times as often as "the reason that."

[Captain Obiligatory]

Mark indirectly brings up the word "that", which always catches me up.

Is it proper to say "the reason I'm a pedantic ass" or "the reason *that* I'm a pedantic ass"?