In a statement like
The weeds have grown overnight. The reason is because it rained yesterday
Is "the reason is because" good grammar? Isn't it better to say
The weeds have grown overnight because it rained yesterday
The second form seems simpler and the words the reason is seem to add nothing to the sentence. Is there any technical reason to avoid the longer form?
"The reason is because..." is wrong; the other one is the one to go with.
That "the reason" is already explaining why, i.e. the reason, so putting also because will create a sort of redundancy.
See this article, which goes more in depth.
I am going to disagree with some of the other answers here. I don't think there is anything grammatically wrong with either of the sentences.
The reason is because it rained yesterday.
The reason is that it rained yesterday.
I agree that this sentence sounds better with that, in part because because is redundant. But consider:
The reason he faked his suicide and went into hiding in Peoria using a fake name is because his life was in danger.
The reason he faked his suicide and went into hiding in Peoria using a fake name is
that his life was in danger.
In this case, I think because sounds superior to that. But don't these sentences have exactly the same grammatical structure? So how can the first one be ungrammatical and other one grammatical? I think the reason because sounds better now is that there is a large gap between reason and because, which means that now the redundancy becomes useful rather than superfluous.
Further, people have been using "the reason is because" for centuries. Consider this quote from Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet):
thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes.
Surely, if reasons can't be because, this is also ungrammatical.
Finally, let me add that the Merriam-Webster dictionary agrees. From the conclusion of their long discussion at the above link:
In sum, "the reason is because" has been attested in literary use for centuries. If you aren't comfortable using the phrase, or feel that it's awkward, don't use it. But maybe lay off the criticism of others—there's really no argument against it. The phrase may grate on your nerves (along with "the reason why is because"), but it puts people who apply it in some very distinguished literary company.
I think "The reason is that it rained yesterday" would be more appropriate. "The reason is because" does not seem to make much logical sense.
In ‘The Penguin Guide to Plain English’, Harry Blamires describes ‘the reason is because’ as ‘causational overkill’. You can see what he means, but my impression is that in BrEng, at least, ‘the reason is because’ is used at least as much as ‘the reason is that’.
"The reason is because" means the same thing as "The reason is [that]", but it does NOT follow that because is redundant or incorrect. Instead, because is playing a non-semantic role in the larger sentence.
This is easiest to understand in the context of spoken language, where the because would be acting as a filler word. Imagine stretching it out further: "The reason is, um, because, well, like, ..." It's perfectly normal in English to use semantically duplicative words as filler, instead of um/er/uh.
In written language, because is instead used (or not used) to improve rhythm and flow. Consider the following two examples, both from writers whose stylistic chops are impeccable:
“If the fellow who wrote it seems to know more of my goings and comings than he could without complicity of mine, the reason is because he is a lovely old boy and quite took possession of me while I was in Boston”
[1915, Robert Frost]“… one of the reasons why I am not particularly well read today is because I have spent so large a part of the last twenty years rereading Dickens and Jane Austen.”
[1932, Alexander Woollcott]
(both quotations copied from this article which contains a good deal more descriptive analysis of this construction)
In both cases, omitting the because (or substituting that) would make the clause transition jar. In the latter case, with the caused-state in between the reason and is because, the because also serves to remind the reader of the overall structure of the sentence.
The reason is because... "X".
The reason is that... "X".
The phrase "the reason is" implies a causal relationship between two events or states. For example the reason that the wagon is red is that I painted it with red paint. The wagon being red is caused by my painting it. I could also say the wagon is red because I painted it. Cause: I painted; effect: it is red.
So If I say, “the reason is because,” what I really am saying is that the cause of there being a reason is that I painted it. This is akin to saying, “I painted the wagon and that is why it is red because I painted it.”
So, indeed No. 1 is a redundancy, a grammatical error, and a logical violation. Much like saying “ATM machine” – (a machine that makes ATMs I suppose), or that something “is comprised of” its constituent parts. But I suppose those are separate topics.
The weeds have grown overnight. The reason is because it rained yesterday.
That's the kind of sentence a teacher of expository writing is likely to flag as verbose or chatty/talky, not as "ungrammatical" or "incorrect".
because is being used as a stand-in for that:
The reason is that it rained yesterday.
But because and the content clause can be tacked directly onto the preceding clause without "the reason is" between them, yielding more succinct expression, which is considered a virtue in expository writing.
The weeds have grown overnight because it rained yesterday.
A teacher of fiction writing might welcome the original version as being true to how many people speak.
If you say "The reason...is because" you are redundant. "The reason" is another way to say "because." Also, I think it is incorrect to say "The reason why." This is because the question word "why" entices you to answer with "because," and it is grammatically incorrect to say "the reason...is because."
If viewed in isolation, it is not a very smooth English phrase, though it is right grammatically. But this could be an answer to a very specific query, where the question was stressed on the word “reason”.
