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Percy Pedant's Page - Due to..Etc.

 

Due to... and Owing to...
Now, I know that nowadays just about everybody uses the phrase Due to whenever required. Brought up (by Mr. Midgley - see Apostrophes) to use that phrase, or the phrase Owing to correctly, it comes as a pleasant surprise when somebody does just that. The latest - and congratulations to them! - was on a C2C rail company poster on Leigh-on-Sea station, shown here in all its glory!

The Answer for the Whole World? >>>>>>>>>>>>>>Use Owing to all the time!
Why? Because I think most people use Due to most of the time because a) they don't really know which is correct and b) they use the shorter of the two - because it's shorter!
But MOST PEOPLE are WRONG, MOST OF THE TIME!
In other words, if most people used OWING TO most of the time, MOST PEOPLE would be RIGHT, MOST OF THE TIME!

The explanation is this (but without going into too much technical terminology) Due to is a descriptive phrase and as such it should always follow a verb of existence, like to be, to seem, to appear,etc. Because it follows the verb, that means it should never appear at the beginning of a sentence.
Think of all the times you have seen newsprint, signs and notices:

Due to wet leaves on the line, the following trains have been cancelled.........

Source: A Notice Board on your Local Railway Station.

Due to a system error, you were not billed for calls you made to 0844, 0845 and some 0870 numbers between 11th August and 7th November 2006.

Source: My BT 'phone bill February 2007.

Tuesday January 30, 08:18 AM
A computer chain is dropping floppy disks from sale due to plummeting demand. PC World will no longer stock the computer storage devices once its existing supplies have been sold.

Source: Yahoo Home page.

The cost over-runs on this project (Eurofighter-Typhoon jet project) are so horrendous they can only be estimated due to "commercial confidentiality".

Source: Private Eye Magazine No.1173 page 34

They're all wrong! (Because none follows a verb of existence) And the BBC, the professional Web, newspapers and magazines and sign and notice writers for even very high-powered bodies are all guilty at some time!
To summarise:Owing to does not need to follow or precede anything in particular, so can appear anywhere in a sentence. Due to must follow a verb of existence and therefore may appear anywhere in a sentence EXCEPT the very beginning.

The Etc....
Some around for many years, others comparatively recent (corrections offered in brackets) :
  • Bored of, fed up of, (bored with or by and fed up with) Recent awful example : Hexham Courant 15th. May 2009, page 2, first paragraph of top story.Also regularly now on BBC radio and TV.
  • Mispronunciations: newkiller (nuclear:new-klee-ur)[Ironically, a problem for both T.Blair and G.Bush], East Angular (East Anglia:Eest An-glee-ur)
  • Mischievious (mis-chiv-us), grievious (greev-us) Worst example of this is actually perpetrated by the Bishop of Nottingham in the famous Hollywood film, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.
  • Non and None confused.(Non = Not or Not connected with.... None = Not one of anything)
  • Loose and lose confused.(Many people use loose instead of lose, I think, because it is spelt like choose, so they think it sounds the same. Loose means 'slack' or the opposite of tight, lose means to mislay permanently.)
  • Usually Police reports on radio/TV: "At 2a.m. this morning...." Well it wouldn't be 2a.m. this afternoon, would it?
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  • Slither and sliver confused. Worst recent example: Utterly amazing - Stephen Fry in his book "Paperweight".
  • Rob and steal confused. Worst example : A couple of years ago in The Times (no less), in a double page headline in the business section: "(Gordon) Brown Robs from the Poor and Gives to the Rich". Latest example: 14.04.08 Waking the Dead BBC1. Boyd, an articulate, intelligent policeman comments"He only robbed a handbag": scriptwriter ignorance.Latest example: George Osbourne, Shadow Chancellor talking about "pensions (being) robbed" - Today programme, 18.04.07.
  • "As far as..XXX..." and then the "goes" or "is concerned" is just left out.
  • Enormity has nothing to do with very large size; it means wickedness.(Enormousness, magnitude). Worst recent examples: Sue Barker on TV report about the size of Andy Murray's job at Wimbledon; Tom Fielden, R4 Today Programme.Also Political Commentator, Andrew Neill on Today at the Conference (BBC2 02.10.07) referred to "the enormity of David Cameron's task" (in becoming Prime Minister); David Blunkett (BBC) talking about the size of cheers from a local football ground; Dallas Campbell ("Bang Goes the Theory"); James May (Daily Telegraph 12.09.09); Lord Seb Coe ("Today" prog. Christmas 2011)
  • 2018 Mishal Husain's interview on BBC, asking Meghan Markle how she viewed the 'enormity' of being a member of the royal family. Perhaps such a position isn't that good, but I don't think Mishal realised just how bad she made it seem!
  • Headline in DT travel supplement: Griff R-J article about a visit to New Zealand, and the 'enormity' of that country.
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    Many of these are several years old, but you can still hear and see all of them from time time in the media......