How do you know when to use "Due to" as opposed to "Because of"?

RESPONSE

Some grammarians would prefer that we never use "due to" at all, but the phrase has some useful and acceptable applications, as Burchfield points out:

   * (payable to) "Pay Caesar what is due to Caesar."
   * (likely to) "It's due to rain this afternoon."
   * (properly owed to) "Much of what we own is due to my wife's investment decisions."
   * (following "to be") "His obesity is due to his daily diet of butterscotch sundaes."

Burchfield then points out that when "due to" is used to create a prepositional phrase in a verbless clause, many grammarians will object.

   * "Due mainly to the engineers' incompetence, the roof began to sag dangerously."
   * "Due to the efforts of the English faculty, students' scores writing have begun to rise."

Burchfield concludes that this use of due to seems to be forming "part of the natural language of the twenty-first century."

The phrase "due to the fact that" can often be replaced, to good effect, with "because."

Authority: The New Fowler's Modern English Usage edited by R.W. Burchfield. Clarendon Press: Oxford, England. 1996.