My graduate school advisor once corrected my proper use of "militate" ever since then the "mitigate" versus "militate" issue has been a peeve of mine.
I'm not fond of people using "mitigate against" instead of "militate against".
Quote:
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/d.../d0082434.html
To mitigate something is to moderate it or make it less severe: The offence was mitigated by the fact that the offender had not seen the warning notice. To militate against something is to affect or influence it adversely: The bad weather militated against the planned outing. People sometimes say mitigate against instead of militate against but this is incorrect and should be avoided.
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I'm also not fond of people using "myriad of" rather than "myriad". (As in “I have myriad tasks to complete at work” versus "I have a myriad of tasks."). In the case of myriad, I think both usages are acceptable, but I prefer the usage minus "of".
Both issues are just peeves. I'm not up at night worrying about how other people use language.