Double Copula or "double is" in professional/technical writing

I am proofreading a professional, technical text written by someone else. In the text, I encountered, "But, the reality is is a..." My intuition says that this should be rewritten as, "But, the reality is that a..." because it looks like a "double is" or a "double copula"

However, I can't tell for sure if this is a legitimate use of two successive copulae. Does, "But, the reality is..." qualify as a dependent clause? It seems to me that "But,..." does not make the subject dependent. Am I right? Am I wrong?

The sentence with a little more context: "But, the reality is is a company like Spacely Sprockets cannot continue to do old fashioned things..."

(We have already had a discussion about beginning sentences with "but" in professional writing. It appears that the consensus is that it is both appropriate and acceptable here.)

I would like to see a way to clearly identify this statement as something that ought to be changed in the document. Grammar dissection, linking to authoritative works and explanations of grammar mechanics will all help me answer this question. Simple answers like, "it's wrong," don't help me be a better proofreader or editor. I already know it is wrong, but I don't know why it is wrong.

Solution 1:

Doubtless some will say NGrams isn't appropriate here, but I think this is interesting...

Obviously many of those instances are "false positives" (particularly, the earlier ones). But the increase in prevalence is quite marked, and glancing through a few pages of the later instances shows that many of them are indeed the construction OP asks about.

Structurally, what seems to be happening is that two separate elements (for example, "the thing is" and "is that") have both become grammaticalised in the mind of the speaker, so they're seen as independent self-contained grammatical items - each containing its own copy of the word "is".

As the chart suggests, it's very much an emerging usage that's gradually extending its scope, so...

"What it is is that blah blah" - seems unremarkable to me.

"The point is is that blah blah" - sounds somewhat "off", but I can live with it.

"The problem with this is is that it sounds weird" - to me, at least, it really does.

Different speakers will draw their own line as to where the construction becomes "unacceptable". Some people may think it makes a difference whether there's a comma between the two instances of "is". But because this is (still?) primarily a spoken usage, and people don't punctuate speech, I think that's largely irrelevant.

Addressing OP's specific question, I'd advise against using the form in "professional" writing for the two reasons mentioned above - it's mainly a spoken rather than written usage, and not everyone will be happy with it in any given context.

Solution 2:

If you write the reality is that a company . . . you will give no ground for complaint.

Solution 3:

I've done some digging and decided to answer the question with more detail than the other answers offered. I'm going to deconstruct the original sentence:

"But, the reality is is a company like Spacely Sprockets cannot continue to do old fashioned things..."

The writer contends that this is merely a double copula and does not need to be changed. However, this statement is not a dependent clause that allows a double copula as indicated in the Wikipedia entry.

1. This sentence begins with the conjunctive adverb, "but" in place of "however."

2. The words, "the reality" is the subject of the sentence.

3. The first "is" serves as the verb (a form of "to be").

In order to identify the beginning of this sentence as a dependent clause, we would look for "dependent marker words" such as "when," "although" or "even." The word, "but" is not a dependent marker word, but instead a "coordinating conjunction."

Since this sentence begins with a coordinating conjunction and not a dependent marker word, this sentence is an "independent clause." Acceptable uses of a double copula will only work in dependent clauses. Therefore, the "double is" should not be used.

The sentence would be better written as:

"But, the reality is that a company like Spacely Sprockets cannot continue to do old fashioned things..."