The OP has the right mindset but the advice is not very helpful. It's not just overall number of words, but <i>which</i> words you remove. In general, you should cut adjectives.<p>As C.S. Lewis notes:
<a href="http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/04/c-s-lewis-on-writing.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/04/c-s-lewis-on-writing.ht...</a><p>> <i>In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, "Please will you do my job for me."</i><p>Here's some advice from Woodrow Wilson that should strike a note with programmers who write modular code:<p><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=zjcUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA268&dq=%22when+you+frame+a+sentence%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=cuMsUtCkNZGq4AOyv4DoBw&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22when%20you%20frame%20a%20sentence%22&f=false" rel="nofollow">http://books.google.com/books?id=zjcUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA268&dq=%2...</a><p>> <i>The best teacher I ever had used to say to me, “When you frame a sentence don’t do it as if you were loading a shotgun but as if you were loading a rifle. Don’t fire in such a way and with such a load that while you hit the thing you aim at, you will hit a lot of things in the neighborhood besides; but shoot with a single bullet and hit that one thing alone.”</i>