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The sentence is mangled and syntactically incorrect anyway - there's no other reason before the "and". Maybe it originally said "and kills off bacteria" before
by dmurray 6y ago
The sentence is mangled and syntactically incorrect anyway - there's no other reason before the "and". Maybe it originally said "and kills off bacteria" before a "because" was added during the editing process.
- ThePowerOfFuet 6y agoThe other reason before the "and" was that it maximised light reflection (and hence ambient light levels in the room).
- dmurray 6y agoBut that reason is stuck in a descriptive clause modifying "lime-plaster" or "a coating of lime-plaster". You wouldn't write "Walls were sometimes whitewashed with a coating of lime-plaster which was white and because lime kills off bacteria." The longer sentence makes it less jarring until you try to parse it carefully, but still very poor style. I don't think I'm being some kind of prescripivist grammar Nazi here: the rest of the piece is written reasonably professionally and I'm sure the editors would fix that if they spotted it.