Mea Culpa: Due diligence

Susanna Richards considers the flouting of stylistic convention in last week’s Independent

Dr Philippe Pinel oversees the removal of chains from a patient – let’s call her Melody – at the Paris asylum for women who do not care for grammatical prescriptiveness (Getty)

In a novel departure from one of our frequent journalistic transgressions, the subheadline of a report on the Israel-Hamas war last week read: “Supplies of food and water ‘practically non-existent’ as the Gaza Strip is plunged into blackouts thanks to fuel shortages”. It was peculiar to see the phrase “thanks to” used in these circumstances: I don’t think anyone is especially grateful for the shortage of petrol and diesel in the territory, and I’m sure we didn’t intend to introduce a sarcastic tone, so I think, really, we can say that was misplaced.

The thing we normally do is controversial in itself among those who care about grammar, and that is to use “due to” in a similar context. The original edition of our stylebook states that “‘due to’ needs a noun to refer to”, so “His absence was due to illness” is permissible while “He was absent due to illness” is not. As the latest edition admits, this is very much a losing battle, but I think it is one that is still worth the effort, just because my old-fashioned ears prefer it when we do it as prescribed.

The substitutes I generally invoke are “because of” and “as a result of”; I think the first of these would have worked in the subheadline about Gaza. I’ve seen “owing to” used effectively, but I think that is not far different from “due to” so tend to avoid it. I’ll admit this is a personal preference; as the esteemed author (and my good friend) Oliver Kamm notes in his book Accidence Will Happen: The Non-Pedantic Guide to English, “Like regarding or concerning, owing is a participle that has come to be used as a preposition. There’s nothing wrong in that.”