How we talk now

If you are old enough, you were probably taught the "due to" crotchet.  

For the youngsters in the gallery, due was only ever supposed to be an adjective, typically following a linking verb and followed by a prepositional phrase: "An error is due to carelessness." What was utterly forbidden was to treat due to as a preposition: "Due to carelessness, an error was made." 

This is how due to is described in Follett's Modern American Usage (1966):"Can someone complain that due to worry he sleeps badly? The answer of everyone who cares about workmanship is a flat no. But to give that answer in the United States today is to commit oneself to fighting a rear-guard action. For the doctrine that any locution in wide use is right by virtue of its mere existence has validated the unanchored due to." Further, "the loose and lawless due to is still rare in writers other than those who take advantage of every latitude."

Wilson Follett's guide was edited and completed by Jacques Barzun. Collaborators included Carlos Baker, Frederick W. Dupree, Dudley Fitts, James D. Hart, Phyllis McGinley, and Lionel Trilling. Follett's Modern American Usage displays how we talked then about language and usage: Eminent authorities spoke ex cathedra about what was right, protecting the language in a desperate rear-guard action from the loose and lawless misuses of ill-educated barbarians who think anything goes in English. 

Here is what Bryan Garner says today about due to. The traditional restriction to adjectival uses following to be is something that a stylist may wish to avoid, since one authority calls it a "graceless phrase, even when used correctly." And today due to "is commonly used as a preposition or conjunctive adverb meaning because of, owing to, caused by, or on grounds of." In Garner's language-change index, due to used for because of or owing to is at Stage 4, "Ubiquitous but ..." rather than Stage 5, "Fully accepted." 

Garner's Modern American Usage (fifth edition, 2022) is representative of the way an authority talks about usage today. He doesn't sneer at people who speak and write the language. He makes use of corpus data to determine how widely and where particular usages occur. He pays attention to the findings of linguists and lexicographers. (Follett--or perhaps Barzun--grouses that those slippery lexicographers admitted prepositional due to into the sacred precincts of Webster's Second.) Neither his own tastes in usage, nor the tastes eight selected worthies, constitute an authority that is allowed to ignore evidence. 

Sneering does continue, though no longer with the elevated style favored by the late John Simon. It is more likely to manifest in online snark parroting some long-deceased English teacher. But we working editors do not go in for it. We understand that there are many Englishes, and that even the dialect of formal written English is not a monolith. We continue to consult dictionaries. We continue to consult authorities. We consult our own wide reading. And we strive to make balanced, informed judgments about what is most effective for the writers we edit, and for their readers.