grâce à? à cause de? en raison de?

Bonjour!

Je ne suis pas allée au bureau aujourd'hui grâce au typhon!!! (I did not go to work today thanks to the typhoon!!!) C'est magnifique!

Maybe let me talk about the prepositions we use to express reasons: "grâce à",  "à cause de" and "en raison de".

"Grâce à" means "thanks to", so it should be used to talk about the reasons leading to good results. 

In the above example, the reason is "le typhon" and the good result is "Je ne suis pas allée au bureau aujourd'hui". Don't forget to change "à" and "le" into "au".

ex. Nous somme arrivés à l'heure grâce à toi.

ex. Il a fini son travail grâce aux conseils de son professeur. 

Attention! à + les = aux

While "grâce à" is used to talk about something good, "à cause de" and "en raison de" are used to mention the reasons leading to bad consequences. 

ex. Nous ne sommes pas sortis à cause du / en raison du mauvais temps.

ex. J'ai perdu mon emploi à cause de / en raison de la mauvais économie.

ex. La chaise dans le jardin est cassée à cause des enfants.

There are several things we need to pay attention to:

1. de + le = du; de + les = des

2. It is said that it would be weird if "en raison de" is followed by people. (?)

3. Some people think it would be ok to use "en raison de" even when you are not blaming the cause, i.e. it can be used in all cases. (?)

Don't forget we have conjunctions "car" and "parce que" to talk about reasons. However, as they are conjunctions, they should be followed by a clause (subject + verb), but not a noun.

OK, that's all for today!

Merci et au revoir!