William Zinnser said, " Don't hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident... Every little qualifier whittles away some fraction of trust on the part of the reader. Readers want a writer who believes in himself and what he is saying. Don't diminish that belief. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold."

Modifiers often spell trouble for writers. We strew them across the landscape of our writing without first determining if they are necessary. Or we use them to take the place of specific nouns and strong verbs. One of our first tasks of editing is stripping our sentences to their cleanest components. Examine every adjective and adverb and make certain that it has a job to do in the sentence.

Here is a list of modifiers & phrases that you can often eliminate-
look for these red flags in your own writing today:

absolutely
active
actively
actual
actually
alleged
any
arguably
available
basically
both
careful
carefully
certain
certainly
comparative
comparatively
considerably
consistently
decidedly
definite
definitely
effective
eminent
eminently
eventually
exactly
existing
fortunately
generally
herself
himself
hopefully
ideally
in fact
in general
in particular
in the future
in the past
indeed
inherently
inevitably
itself
meaningful
meaningfully
namely
necessarily
needless to say
now
over time
overall
particular
particularly
per se
pretty
quite
rather
real
really
related
relatively
reportedly
respectively
so
so-called
somewhat
specific
themselves
total
unfortunately
very
whatever
especially
totally
utterly
truly
madly
deeply