Dear everyone:

Stop using “pen” as a verb. It doesn’t make you sound clever, it makes you sound pretentious.

Also stop saying “differentiate” when you mean “distinguish.” “Apropos” is not just a smarter-sounding synonym for “appropriate.” Look up “epitome”; it doesn’t mean what you think it means.

And for the sake of all that’s holy, an adverb-adjective pairing does not equal a compound adjective: that’s what adverbs are for–to modify adjectives (and verbs of course.) In other words, fully loaded does not require a hyphen. Nor does wholly owned or maddeningly stupid. Inserting an unnecessary hyphen does not, once again, make you look smart. No one looks stupider than someone trying too hard to look smart.

Thank you. That is all.

also stop saying whilst

While I can’t think of a time when I did use pen as a verb, it is one and this complaint is full of shit. To pen a letter or “go pen those pigs” is 100% reasonable and correct.

there are occasions where pen as a verb is appropriate but the problem the OP has is when people use it wrongly

Apropos the OP: Thank you for penning your thoughts.

He didn’t pen them, he keyboarded them.

Thank you for differentiating that.

I’ll pencil it in for next week.

That’s UK usage: along with things like “learnt” and “crumpets.”

But it adds colour to the language.

I thought a crumpet was a wayward woman?

Oh, and I forgot “Wankel rotary engine.”

That’s a tart.

Huh. And to think I just ate a tart the other day.

A *wanton *woman. As in: what I got, she be wanton.

How is “epitome” being misused?

Curious of one point in the OP: in what way are people using “epitome” that is not correct?

“Her outfit was the epitome of bad taste.”

“I didn’t want to read the book, so he gave me a brief epitome.”

These both are, I believe, correct, although the second usage is vanishingly rare in my experience. I am curious how it is being misused.

My self is mostly interested in eliminating the misuse of the reflexive case.

That’s a mixed bag of alleged linguistic infelicities to be so testy about. You might try organizing, even researching, your ideas for a post before you actually hit Post.

You’re right about that 2nd usage, but I’d never heard it before now. If someone had said that I would’ve been embarrassed by proxy for their ignorance. I’m humbled.