Three words that many people hate are: got, but and that.
I have never understood why got and but receive such bad press. I agree you can often use more specific words to replace got (I got a book out of the library/I borrowed a book from the library), but it is a versatile little word because it has so many different meanings. The Macquarie Dictionary lists 40 different usages, including obtain, fetch, receive, earn, communicate and prepare.
I like the word but because it is simple and the alternatives, however and yet, are more formal.
That I have mixed feelings about. Often you can delete that without any loss of meaning, but sometimes it adds to the rhythm of a sentence. And it is preferable to the overuse of which.
On the overuse of which, Mark Tredinnick (The Little Green Grammar Book, UNSW Press, 2008) says:
‘Which is overused on the basis of a bias against that, a word many students are foolishly taught at school to disdain, along with got and but. There’s a degree of unreconstructed bad attitude – a bit of prissiness and pomp – about the overuse of which. It’s one more small means by which Australian writers, particularly in high end policy and commercial documents, inflect their writing with a formality quite unnecessary, indeed unhelpful, to the meaning they are trying to make and the professional tone they are trying to strike. Which is a sibilant habit, I think, like assist and amongst and whilst.’
He also writes about the difference between which and that, which I cover at: http://www.onlinegrammar.com.au/grammarTips/which-that.html
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