Due to/ owing to

There's a chap called David Allen Green who comments on law and policy. He used to tweet quite prolifically but then decided to focus on his blog. I subscribe to his newsletter and usually read his articles there. I can't always follow the deeper legal language but the articles are interesting and there's something very seductive about reading the writings of people who are smart and eloquent. I guess it makes a pleasant change to the current level of public discourse. 

Today he commented on the extraordinary situation yesterday whereby the government appeared to coerce a senior civil servant into retracting a statement made to a select committee via a subsequent letter. DAG's dissection of that letter - to show both that it had more than one author and to demonstrate that it was not a "clarification" - can be found in this post on his blog.

What caught my eye was this combination of sentences:

Firstly, "Some would even say that the “due to” is a tell that someone other than the civil servant was involved in drafting this letter."

And then, later on, after the use for of the term "owing to", "So the supposed author does know better than to use “due to” earlier in the letter".

I don't pretend to be a grammar expert but I was surprised that there was a difference between these two phrases: surely 'due to' and 'owing to' mean the same thing? So, I had a Google about and got lost in all sorts of grammatical meta language but here is the most succinct explanation I could find:

"Simply put, use ‘due to’ when you can interchange it with ‘caused by’: the accident seems to occur due to driver’s negligence. And use ‘owing to’ when you can interchange it with ‘because of’: the school is out owing to (not due to) the headmaster’s illness." (From grammarforexperts.com)


There you go. (I must admit I corrected their colon use as you can see by comparing with the original post, such is my impertinence!)

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Reading: 'Underland' by Robert Macfarlane