I know there are more important things to pursue, what with
the war in Syria,
global warming, … But:
"Do the due diligence" has emerged out of the
jungle of legal jargon to infect the language of every day business. Where diligence would have once been more
than adequate, it has become chic, linguistically muscular and maybe even
heroic to replace that with ‘due diligence’ and when possible inflate that to ‘do
the due diligence’.
From
a recent memo:
Because of that, members of the media do their due diligence to follow the process and reach out to many
people attempting to get comments.
How
it might be rewritten:
Because of that, members of the media are diligent when
following the process and reaching out to many people attempting to get
comments.
It
is a sort of linguistic brinkmanship when the ordinary is ignored and every
instance is an occasion for the strongest possible terms, might as well strike
the singular use of diligence from the language. We should run this, objection
to the misuse, up the flag pole and see who salutes. D.C.
