A Recipe for Disaster

Today's selection comes from a HuffPo slide show of funny corrections. As we all know now, "due to" is used incorrectly in this correction (in fact, we can dispose of the whole "due to" clause entirely and achieve greater brevity and clarity). But the bigger issue, to my mind, is recognizing cilantro as a foodstuff. Cilantro is a vile, odious creation of the devil. It is, as I believe I have said before, the Charles Manson of garnishes: small but devious, and it murders anything it comes into contact with. 

I would rather have the cement.

Walk of Shame

Walking back from lunch yesterday through the quaint streets of downtown PoCo, I came across a series of signs within a few feet of each other that warrant picayune picking on. First up, the Dairy Queen on the corner:

We've covered the whole confounding "due to" thing before, and this usage clearly doesn't meet the criteria we all agreed on at that time. "Closed for renovations" would have worked just fine. Aside from that, though, I am curious about those "boxes of novelties."

Farther down the block is this establishment:

Apostrophes are obviously not among the accessories available here. That should be "Ladies' Fashion." There are some people, by the way--people of questionable breeding with sloped foreheads, for the most part--who argue that this usage is acceptable on the grounds that "ladies" is serving as a plural adjective rather than a possessive. To them I say: when's the last time you saw a sign touting "Men Fashion?"

But wait a minute. Not two doors down, at my daughter's favorite store (she likes to watch the doggies in the window) we find this:

I see what's happening now. Evidently the 2500-block of Shaughnessy Street has been struck by an apostrophe drought (and what's with the "$$$"?), a diagnosis confirmed by the presence of the Peoples Drug Mart across the street.

The Snow Was Due, Too

Ok, I'll admit that puzzling out the difference between "due to" and "because of" tends to give me the shivering fantods* so let's just get it over with now and never speak of it again.

Put "due to" or "because of" together with a supporting cast of words and you have adjectival (in the case of "due to") and adverbial (in the case of "because of") prepositional phrases. That means "due to" should only modify nouns or pronouns and "because of" should modify verbs. Also, "due to" can serve as a subject complement, meaning...oh, the hell with it.

The most succinct explanation I have found comes from Englishplus.com:

Due to means "caused by." It should be used only if it can be substituted with "caused by."

Incorrect: The game was postponed due to rain.
Correct: The game was postponed because of rain.
Correct: The game's postponement was due to rain.

That sounds good enough to me. So let's test it out on this paragraph from yesterday's story in The Province, about Vancouver's annual snow hysteria:

The C52 community shuttle in White Rock was cancelled due to ice and snow on the roads...The West Vancouver Blue Bus also experienced delays due to an accident on the Lion's Gate Bridge.

Using our new litmus test, we can now tell that the second "due to" is correct--it is an adjective modifying the noun "delays" and it can be substituted with "caused by." That first one, however, needs the adverbial "because of" to modify the verb "was cancelled."  We can verify this because we know that "was cancelled caused by ice and snow" doesn't work.

Incidentally, the snow is gone today. But there are still plenty of traffic delays due to the ineptitude of Vancouver's city planners.

*Fantods: an ill-defined state of irritablility and distress.