SC Misconception #7 – ‘Due to’ cannot modify a verb

This article is a part of a series of articles on SC Misconceptions. In this series, I’m going to address many misconceptions prevalent among GMAT aspirants.

The misconception addressed in this post is:

‘Due to’ cannot modify a verb

The reasoning given to support this misconception is that ‘due to’ is an adjective and thus can only modify a noun. As a result, ‘due to’ should be used only when it can be replaced with ’caused by’.

However, this rule is outdated, just as the rules highlighted in Misconceptions #2, #5, and #6 are. Many top dictionaries contain a definition of ‘due to’ that is the same as ‘because of’.

Merriam Webster says:

MacMillan says:

Collins says:

However, Collins also adds:

“It’s widely used despite objections by some grammarians”.

If you research the difference between ‘due to’ and ‘because of’, you’ll find conflicting views on different websites. However, one thing is clear that calling ‘due to’ completely wrong for modifying a verb is not a reliable rule. Given the debate around the rule, it’s sensible to expect GMAC to not test us on this concept, just as GMAC has clearly mentioned on other issues such as this and this. Rather GMAC clearly says (OG 2019 Page #676):

You will not be expected to take sides in contentious controversies about grammar, usage, or style or to apply rules that are widely regarded as highly pedantic or outdated. 

Thus, I’d suggest that you ignore this rule (that ‘due to’ cannot modify a verb) while evaluating options and focus on other issues. An option in which ‘due to’ modifies a verb can turn out to be correct. 

If you want to ask me for an official question to back up my claim, I’d like to admit that I don’t have one. However, I still wrote this article at the risk of being criticized because

1. By the time a question containing ‘due to’ in the correct option appears in an official guide, it may be too late for you. Why? Because all questions that appear in the official guides are retired questions i.e. the questions that have earlier been used to score candidates. The question that will appear in the next official guide is probably being used right now to score candidates. So, by the time such a question appears in an official guide, many people, including you, might have already rejected the correct option confidently in their actual exams. Thus, if an idea makes sense, we should accept it, regardless of whether there is an official precedent or not.
2. For a long time, almost every company in the GMAT prep industry taught that a regular pronoun cannot refer to a noun in possessive form. And then, in OG 2016, we had a question in which a regular pronoun referred to a noun in the possessive form in the correct option. The question had other options in which a regular pronoun was not referring to a noun in the possessive form. People who believed in that rule must have easily rejected the correct option in their actual exams.
3. If we pay attention to CR and RC questions, we can already find instances in which ‘due to’ is being used to modify verbs. Here are a couple of sentences:
   1. production declines due to inadequate supplies of raw materials (‘due to’ modifies the verb ‘declines’) – Link to the passage
   2. many people who are totally blind due to lesions in the visual cortex of the brain easily maintain a 24-hour sleep-wake cycle (‘due to’ modifies the verb ‘are’. If you replace ‘due to’ with “caused by”, the sentence wouldn’t make sense) – Link to the question