: Is there any stylistic reason to avoid the word "got"? I was taught around the age of 10 to always avoid the word "got". I was told that it's always possible to rephrase a sentence so as

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Not the word itself, no, but many of its modern uses, surely.

I got no idea
You have got to be kidding me

are fine examples of how never to use ‘got’.
‘I got no idea’ is hardly slang. it’s just a common mistake but still and only, a mistake. You might try to defend it with the plea that since the user can’t understand the difference, it can’t be a deliberate mistake and must therefor be no mistake at all, but would you?
'You have got to be kidding me' isn't correct; a fine example of how 'have' and 'got' and have got' confuse people.
'You have to be kidding me' is correct but yes, most people don't care.

I got it
I got sick
I got a book
I got there in time

have always been correct.
I got by until long after 10 on hearing alone and yes, ‘got’ frequently got my goat. It seemed ugly but why wasn’t obvious, until I found Fowler’s The King’s English. Even in 1908 that tome lamented how often ‘got’ was getting misused. Fowler quotes RG White: ‘… got, having been by custom poorly substituted for gat, so that we say He got away, instead of He gat away, many persons abbreviate gotten into got, saying He had got, for He had gotten.’ Is it surprising that after 100 years we get ‘He got’ from a further mutation of ‘He had got?'
‘I got the ball’ isn’t wrong; it just doesn’t mean ‘I have it’ but rather ‘I caught it.’ It often sounds clumsy but it isn’t wrong.
‘I’ve got the ball’ might be a mistake for ‘I have the ball’ or - although that’s now pretty-much universally heard as archaic - for ’I’ve gotten the ball’. Either way I think the best defence for ‘I’ve got the ball’ is as an idiomatic mistake, not a neutral development of the language, however natural…though let’s come back to that in another 100 years!
‘Have you got a clue?’ is not the same as ‘Do you have a clue?’ It’s at best unclear and if it really worked, it should mean ‘Have you found…’ not ‘Do you possess…’

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Got may be an overused word, but never ban any word from your vocabulary entirely.

Use it sparingly; favor the alternatives when they exist, but don't miss out on the expressions ("you have got to be kidding me").

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It depends on the context. It can be casual, but it's the correct past tense of "to get."

I got sick.
I got a book for my birthday.
I got there in time.

Perfectly correct, if slightly casual. You could rewrite to "I became sick, I received a book, I arrived in time," but you'd start to come off as needlessly formal.

In response to a falling baseball:

I got it!

You could say "I have it!" or "I'll get it!" but on the field nobody cares.

I got no idea.

Slang. Comprehensible, but technically wrong; it should be "I have no idea."

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