Due Diligence

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how you doing?

Doing well. Who’s this?

This is Naomi from Missoula, Montana.

Hi, Naomi. How you doing?

Hi, Naomi.

Well, I wrote on your Facebook page a question I had about an essay I’m writing and using the term due diligence and wondering if it could be used in a non-legal form and it would be appropriate in an essay of the sort I was writing.

So a little kind of a personal essay that is going to be in, or hoping, I’m hoping it will be, in a kind of a mom’s magazine that’s based here in Missoula.

Do a little buzz marketing. It’s Mama Load Magazine.

Like, I hit the mother load, but mama.

Mama Load.

Okay.

I had written an essay for them before, and this is kind of a follow-up piece to that.

Okay.

And what’s it about, may I ask?

Well, I’m friends with a publisher, and at one point I was looking for something along the lines of dating as a single mother, because it’s a mom’s magazine, and there was nothing there.

So I wrote her in frustration saying, well, is there nothing there?

She said, okay, there’s nothing, write it yourself.

So I wrote something from that perspective, and then so now I’m writing a follow-up to being recently married as a once-single mother.

Oh, so it works.

Congratulations.

How are you squeezing the term due diligence into your essay?

I mean, it’s something about personal and about moms.

This is actually kind of then talking about bringing in a new dad to the life of my sons.

And yes, they still have their dad. That’s not a thing that’s going to change.

But they have a guy who’s at the house. He’s doing the work.

This is the guy doing the due diligence, cleaning up the messes, helping with homework, saving for college, etc.

That he’s the one in the house doing the daily duties.

Yeah.

Due diligence usually is a term that means you are investigating something or researching something with thoroughness.

And I don’t think that applies here.

I don’t.

Okay.

Well, I think the audience, too, the tone of the magazine.

Yeah, there’s something legal about that term, something almost clinical.

And I think he’s there doing the daily duties, right?

Yeah.

I think that’s a perfect description of it.

And there’s no need to pull out this phrase from another register of English.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don’t know what it is about that phrase. It kind of is just catchy to me.

It is catchy.

Maybe it’s because I’m talking about someone who at least was formerly a lawyer.

I will tell you that the term due diligence is on the tipping point of overuse in some circles.

It appeared in a list of newspeak put out by a London publisher in 2008 of words that you shouldn’t use.

And they say due diligence suggests thoroughness where there is none.

And then when I worked in journalism recently, there were a number of people in the office that would just roll their eyes at due diligence because it was the kind of thing that people would say when they didn’t actually have any details and had done no due diligence.

Like, you should have performed your due diligence to discover the background, meaning I don’t know anything and I don’t have any information, but there must be something there because I want there to be.

And it sounds good.

And it sounds good. It makes you sound highfalutin.

And that’s one thing I kind of put it in there and then I didn’t want to sound that.

Did you take it out in the end?

What’s that?

Did you take it out in the end?

Did you arm wrestle your red head?

I’m still in the process of writing it.

Oh, okay.

I haven’t completed it yet.

Okay.

I would say leave it out and look for another way to describe this man who’s become essential for those day-to-day duties.

All right.

Well, it has been awesome talking to you guys.

Our pleasure.

My husband and I are very big fans, and he’s kind of jealous that I’m the one who gets to talk to you.

Hey, send us a copy.

Yeah, send us a copy.

Send us a copy when it’s done, all right?

Okay, I will.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

877-929-9673.