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*cause that*

*cause that*

May 12, 2013 By Nestor 3 Comments

Many learners of English make the following mistake:

*The traffic caused that I was late.*

In English, we cannot use that after cause.

We can only say:

Something causes something else.

The storm caused a power cut.

If you want to say that the traffic caused you to be late in natural English, you need to use a different structure, for example:

Because of the traffic, I was late.

The traffic made me late.

The traffic made me arrive late.

 

Filed Under: Typical mistakes in English

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Gurmeet says

    January 6, 2014 at 5:16 pm

    really helpful. thanks

    Reply
  2. TrueLogin says

    July 2, 2017 at 2:27 pm

    Hello,

    Thank you, it’s helpful.

    But I have a question:
    Is there a difference between *because of* and *due to*?
    Thanks in advance.

    Reply
    • Nestor says

      July 2, 2017 at 8:04 pm

      Hi, there is a subtle difference but it is often acceptable to use them interchangeably. Perhaps I will write a post on the differences. In the meantime, you can check out this article Because of vs. Due to.

      Reply

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