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I see in my company mails, there is a lot of usage of the statement Due to urgent personal errands (..I may not report to office today) which, by hunch, I guess is not a proper usage.

What is the correct way to use it,if I am right?

Sampurna Ray
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Sree
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  • It looks fairly standard to my eyes, but perhaps I'm missing something. Why do you have a hunch it is not correct? What seems incorrect about it? – Mark Thompson Feb 26 '15 at 07:45
  • May be usage of Due to with Errands is not correct? – Sree Feb 26 '15 at 07:46
  • It needs a verb to make it a grammatical sentence. I am just trying to think what that verb should be. One doesn't make an errand, one usually runs an errand - for someone else. So perhaps Due to having to run some/undertake some urgent personal errands.... But it seems a very unspecific explanation for suddenly taking time off work, I must say. – WS2 Feb 26 '15 at 07:46
  • "Due to" is usually followed by a noun in my experience, as in "Due to the blizzard, school is closed today" or "Due to his high fever, Jason stayed in bed". "Due to urgent personal errands" is a correct formulation as an opening clause (of the complete sentence you show later), but it also implies that the errands were unavoidable. – Mark Thompson Feb 26 '15 at 07:51
  • Are you referring to the old dispute about using "Due to..." as a prepositional phrase? http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/due%20to – anemone Feb 26 '15 at 07:58
  • @WS2, Since having to run some/undertake some urgent personal errands, may be? – Sree Feb 26 '15 at 08:00
  • @MarkThompson I have followed it by a noun - having to run (a gerund phrase). When I said it needed a verb, that was not strictly correct. – WS2 Feb 26 '15 at 09:07
  • @Sree You conclude with a question mark, but I am puzzled as to what you are asking. – WS2 Feb 26 '15 at 09:08
  • Sree: No, since cannot be used with a gerund in this sense. It requires a clause as its object when it means because. @WS2 I actually find the sentence a lot neater and less cumbersome with no gerund. “Due to having to run some urgent personal errands” is unnecessarily wordy and (IMO) clumsy compared to “Due to urgent personal errands”. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 26 '15 at 09:51
  • This is stretching the meaning of due to, however: your urgent personal errands are only quite indirectly the cause of your not coming in to the office. There's nothing grammatically wrong with the sentence, but it is a bit awkward. A more natural way of phrasing it might be “I have some urgent personal matters to attend to, and may not be able to make it to the office today”, vel sim. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 26 '15 at 09:56
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    @JanusBahsJacquet But if you just say due to...errands, it doesn't clarify anything about the errands. But I suppose we say Due to snow, I shall not be there. So you may well be right. I, perhaps, couldn't get over the fact that someone was offering such an abbreviated reason for not coming in to work. It sounded a bit like Due to some inconvenience I shall not be at work today. You wouldn't have got away with that in my time. But then I suppose the workplace isn't what it once was. – WS2 Feb 26 '15 at 09:59
  • Why are we debating grammar rather than pointing out that errands cannot be urgent, and trying to describe them as such renders this not only a lame excuse (as Scott so aptly put it), but an obvious one as well? – Dan Bron Feb 26 '15 at 11:52

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Due to urgent personal errands, I may not report to the office today.

This is a lame excuse, and it might have gotten a person fired ten years ago, but it seems there is no problem with the grammar.

Due to is used prepositionally, validated by OED under due:

The use of due to as a prepositional phrase meaning ‘because of’ (as in he had to retire due to an injury) first appeared in print in 1897, and traditional grammarians have opposed this prepositional usage for more than a century on the grounds that it is a misuse of the adjectival phrase due to in the sense of ‘attributable to, likely or expected to’ ( the train is due to arrive at 11:15), or ‘payable or owed to’ ( render unto Caesar what is due to Caesar). Nevertheless, this prepositional usage is now widespread and common in all types of literature and must be regarded as standard English. The phrase due to the fact that is very common in speech, but it is wordy, and, especially in writing, one should use instead the simple word because.

Errands is the object of the preposition, and the adjectives urgent and personal modify errands, to complete the leading prepositional phrase:

Due to urgent personal errands,

I is the subject of the sentence (apparently the person with the urgent personal errands).

May is the auxiliary of the verb report, negated by not, and modified temporally by today.

To the office is a prepositional phrase modifying report locationally, and completing the meaningful sentence:

Due to urgent personal errands, I may not report to the office today.

ScotM
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