Those of you who are well-versed in grammar issues may point out that a phrase ("reasons why" or "reason why") that I used several times in my preceding post (
"Reasons why people fail the bar exams...") is redundant or ungrammatical. On the contrary, "reason why" is not redundant or ungrammatical.
1. In terms of usage, Bryan A. Garner says that "reason why" is not redundant and has been used for the last 200 hundred years or more.
2. The "Arrant Pedantry" website at
https://www.arrantpedantry.com/2013/05/08/the-reason-why-this-is-correct/ gives the technical basis why the phrase "reason why" is not redundant or ungrammatical:
"... why functions as a relative adverb, but it appears almost exclusively after the word reason. (To be clear, all relative pronouns and adverbs can be considered conjunctions because they connect a subordinate clause—the relative clause—to a main one.) In a phrase like the reason why this is correct, why connects the relative clause this is correct to the noun it modifies, reason. Relative pronouns refer to a noun phrase, while relative adverbs refer to some kind of adverbial phrase."
