The reason ... because ...

A reader pulled me up on this sentence in Rebel without a Clause:

The reason that the first example of use for crawbob is 1917 is simply because it comes from Narrabri’s North Western Courier, a paper which opened in 1913 and closed in 1955.

Initially my early grammar lessons kicked in and I thought — the reader is absolutely right! And I am absolutely wrong.

However, having done some research I find that the situation is not clear cut and I am in very good company.

The objection is that of redundancy.  If your sentence begins ‘The reason is … ‘ then because is simply a repetition since it means for the reason that.

I like very much A WORLD WITHOUT “WHOM”, the Buzzfeed usage guide by Emma J. Favilla.  She manages to write about usage matters in an amusing way and with a great deal of commonsense.

She points out that there is plenty of excellent redundancy in English because other factors come into play.  The flow of the sentence is improved, or an emphasis is placed which is helpful, or an idiom becomes entrenched. There are various reasons why we adopt certain English patterns and logic has nothing to do with it.  Favilla accepts that both the reason why and the reason is because are fine and comments ‘how joyful it is to live in a world where we needn’t be kept up all night worrying about such things’.

She  — and others — note that there is perhaps a greater need for because in sentences where something comes between the reason is and the explanation given. In this situation because serves to remind us that we are looking for the reason.  My original sentence falls into this category.

And finally, I am in the company of a number of well-respected writers who have used this expression.  Accepted usage trumps theoretical logic.

But a bit of me still feels that, as an editor, I should have pulled up at that sentence.