“Due to” vs. “owing to” [duplicate]

Is there any difference between due to and owing to? Are there some specific situations when owing to is to be used rather than due to?

Solution 1:

To my ear as a native speaker in America, "owing to" sounds forcedly formal, but would be used in the same kinds of sentences as "due to". The key would be why you are being more formal-- it could be the setting, or perhaps you are attempting to call attention to technical details. For example:

• I am hot due to the weather.
• I am hot owing to global warming.

Global Warming, in the second case, would be changing the weather, which changes my temperature. You are using the more formal sounding phrase in order to emphasize distance.

That said, you can interchange the two words without significant loss of meaning:

• I am hot owing to the weather.
• I am hot due to global warming.

In the first case, I can only assume you are either in a very formal setting, or are trying to sound stuck up. In the second case, you are making a more emphatic statement about global warming, treating the whole weather system as a whole instead of as distinct parts that could be discussed further as a more formal phrasing might imply.