Seth Godin just made a great point on the value of cutting away the empty calories in your writing.
I’m quite partial to the advice in On Writing Well in this arena too.
But these rules are easy to forget, and often hard to spot when you’re so close to the writing. So I often drop my writing into hemingwayapp.com to highlight them. It’s not perfect. But I find the app is useful in identifying overuse of adverbs and passive voice, two of my worst habits.
Subtraction, not addition, is often the solution to clearer writing.
P.S. William Zinsser’s On Writing Well is another great resource to refine and add clarity to your writing.