Does anyone else find substitutions for familiar words very jarring?
For example, we no longer leave somewhere, we 'exit' it (and I always read 'exiting' as 'exciting' 
because for me, the final t should be doubled before adding the 'ing'). 'Change' becomes 'transition,' 'given' becomes 'gifted' and 'because' becomes 'due to' (which is a dubious synonym, anyway).
And I loathe 'utilised' instead of 'used' 
When I read articles using words like this I find it really hard to concentrate on what is being 'said' as I'm so distracted by the 'wrongness' of the words...
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Pedants' corner
'Back in the day' 
Transition:
A Transition town, or more generally a transition initiative, is a grassroot community project that seeks to build resilience in response to peak oil, climate destruction, and economic instability by creating local groups that uphold the values of the transition network.
grrr!
'The vast majority' - no, it's 'most'.
I can't understand why people use this phrase on twitter. 'Most' uses far fewer precious characters...
I have long been silently screaming at 'impact' used as a synonym for the verb 'affect'. Though I rather suspect that it is used because people can't remember whether the verb is 'affect' or 'effect'. 'Impact' (verb) means (meant?) something completely different, as we pedants all know
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