The impact of failures due to rust in, corrosion of, and constant mois

Fame,
I'm not terribly fond of this question, but the use of "due to" is perfectly correct. "Due to" is a preposition, and as such, it needs to be followed by either a noun or something behaving as a noun (a gerund or a substantive clause).
In this sentence, the structure doesn't even get that fancy. In the first part of the sentence we have the parallel construction ---- "due to rust ... (due to) corrosion ... (due to) constant moisture leakage ..." ---- those are three nouns. At the end of the sentence, we have "due to the large number of ..." ---- "number" is also a noun. The word "leakage" describes an action, but itself is a noun. It's all legit here.
Mike

I think due to is not appropriate here.

(constant moisture leakage into cables) is magnified (verb) due to (noun) (WRONG)
(constant moisture leakage into cables)(condition) is due to (noun) (RIGHT)

how (constant moisture leakage into cables) is magnified ?
Ans must start with because not with due to.

due to is not modifying noun here instead it is modifying action magnified.

But isn't 'due to' = 'caused by'?

Then if we replaced caused by in the sentence it wouldn't make any sense

Please advice Mike
Cheers!
J

Dear jlgdr,
I'm happy to respond.

This is a very tricky diction point, and so many people get this wrong in colloquial English. The GMAT loves to trap people on this one. You can read some background here:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/gmat-idiom ... nsequence/

The basic idea is: the word "due" is an adjective, a noun-modifier, so the phrase "due to" can only modify a noun, NOT a verb or a clause. It's very different from the preposition "because of", which acts as a verb-modifier. While both phrases indicate the cause of something, their grammatical use is different. We can say:
"Because of rain, the picnic was canceled."
The "because of" phrase modifies the action, the verb. By contrast:
"Due to rain, the picnic was canceled."
That sentence is flat out incorrect. "Due to" has to modifier a noun, and like all noun-modifiers, it is bound by the Modifier Touch Rule. Here, the sentence is illogically suggesting that picnic itself was caused by rain, and that this picnic caused by rain was canceled. That's not the intended meaning at all. This latter sentence would pass as 100% acceptable in spoken English, and some folks would even consider it more sophisticated.

The structure "caused by" is not a structure I have ever seen on official GMAT material. I suppose it could show up. The structure "due to" is definitely more formal and more sophisticated.

In this question, I believe I misspoke above. The structure "X is due to Y" is 100% correct. Here, though, re-reading it carefully now, I see what we have is "X is magnified due to Y", an incorrect use of "due to" as a verb modifier. That's a problem. There's a great deal I don't like about this question: I don't think adheres to the high standards of the GMAT.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

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