The one bit of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style that is widely remembered is 'Omit needless words'.
I've often tried to apply this principle to design.
It's nice to hear a different perspective. Yagoda notes (quoted in the fab FT magazine), Strunk and White's "implicit and sometime explicit goal is a transparent prose, where the writing exists solely to serve the meaning, and no trace of the author - no mannerisms, no voice, no individual style - should remain."