I’ve just got a response from one of my pen pals—a reader of National Geographic who still corresponds via U.S. mail and thus is unlikely to see this blog—and I am saddened. He says: “I am sorry to hear that the editorial staff has lowered their standards. I had long held up National Geographic as a top example of correct grammar and punctuation but sadly can no longer do that.”

Have we really lowered our standards? And what egregious thing have we done?

For one, we do not use farther and further in the same way our reader does. He would use further only in the sense of “in addition to.” Our style has long been to use farther for true physical distance and further for all abstract and figurative contexts.

        He walked several miles farther.
        He divided each order further, into genera.
        The rollout of further marine preserves. . .
        Education, respect, and love go much further than. . .

But I suspect that difference of opinion is relatively minor compared with our disagreement on the use of due to as a preposition. The National Geographic Style Manual of the 1960s and 1970s had this to say about due to:

        Avoid, except when used to qualify a noun.
        Correct: His absence is due to illness.
        Incorrect: He is absent, due to illness.

In other words, we were sticking with those lexicologists who insist that due to cannot be used as a synonym for because of, that it can be used only as an adjective to modify a noun.

However, some time in the early 1980s, after consulting dictionaries and other usage guides, we changed our policy and determined there was nothing wrong with using due to as a preposition.

For instance, Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, says:      
Due to as a compound preposition meaning “because of, owing to” has been in idiomatic use since the 14th century. Some object to this use on the grounds that due to is historically an adjective, to be used predicatively: The explosion was due to a gas leak. Nevertheless prepositional use of due to is standard in all varieties of speech and writing.

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language says:
Due to has been widely used for many years as a compound preposition like owing to, but some critics have insisted that due should be used only as an adjective. . . . This seems a fine point, however, and since due to is widely used and understood, there seems little reason to avoid using it as a preposition.

So there we are. National Geographic style changed after thoughtful research and in keeping with current usage guides, but my pen pal thinks we have lowered our standards. I prefer to say we have different standards, and that ours is more sensitive to the times.

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