Hence why incorrect

It is probably due to the fact that the people saying 'hence why' are usually not very well educated people trying to sound important or clever.

Lately, I have even heard journalists and politicians saying 'hence why'. It appears they are using it as a synonymn for 'so' or 'therefore'. I quote this recent example from a political journalist:.

Alas dear fellows, it is quite infuriating, hence now I must go hence in bitterness, in debt to your mercy. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.

Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 9 years, 2 months ago. Active 3 months ago. Viewed 64k times. My question is, is the use of the word "hence", used in it's most common sense as an alternative to "therefore", strictly acceptable in English usage in the following example: I like bananas, hence why I eat them.

Improve this question. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Going by Ngrams : Excerpts : Barbara Heyman, I looked at it later in with the idea of arranging it for violin, cello, and piano.

Thomas A. Blackson, The details of his pursuit were so undefined it was difficult to understand how the pursuit was supposed to work and hence why anyone should value it so highly. Marcel Fafchamps, This may explain why the threat of stigmatization is largely ineffective against so-called informal sector firms which, as a rule, are not registered — and hence why transactions among informal sector firms remain quite unsophisticated.

In other words, this usage appears to be quite valid. Improve this answer. I appreciate the response. I believe "hence" should be interchangeable with "therefore", in which case the bananas sentence wouldn't make sense but the Blackson and Fafchamps examples would and the Heyman example wouldn't. The statistical significance of the NGram points doesn't even rise to the level of a rounding error. Look at the Y axis. It also masks the different polysemes of hence. With this sense, Charles needs I like bananas, hence my eating them by the dozen.

In calling the hence why string a structure, as Huizhe does, one is getting perilously close to claiming a cohesion that probably isn't there in most cases that are grammatical. EdwinAshworth There are plenty more meanings of hence than just that.

Show 1 more comment. Tulli Tulli 1. I quote this recent example from a political journalist: " However, the folowing sentence would make sense: " The sentence you quote offers new info to explain this existing question. The "why this story Because doing so will result in you using commas , around it incorrectly. Contrary to what some might believe, the term is not a conjunction. Here are example sentences demonstrating the varied ways in which it could be incorporated in different sentences:.

Generally, two conjunctions do not appear successively in a sentence. For example:. For instance:. If a pause seems natural, use the punctuation mark. Contrary to general perception, English grammar books do not dictate the use of commas in writing as a comma denotes a specific intonation. If you are likely to use that particular intonation in speech, use a comma when you write it down. If not, do not use the comma. However, they do not mean the exact same thing or work as synonyms, at least not always.

The word is often linked with deductive reasoning.