Remove Plugin Stylesheets and Scripts in WordPress

Many WordPress plugins implicitly inject stylesheets and JavaScript files into the page on each page load.  If you don't plan on custom-styling for elements created by the plugin, that's no problem...but you can get caught in a CSS specificity battle if you do intend custom styling.  If the plugin is created properly (which is sometimes a big "if" when it comes to WordPress plugins), you can programmatically tell these files not to load from within your given theme.

When scripts and styles are added properly, they use the wp_enqueue_style and wp_enqueue_script functions within the plugin files as such:

// Styles Format:  wp_enqueue_style($handle, $src, $deps, $ver, $media);
wp_register_style('pagination-style', plugins_url('style.css', __FILE__));
wp_enqueue_style('pagination-style');

// Script Format:  wp_enqueue_script($handle, $src, $deps, $ver, $in_footer);
wp_register_script('jquery', 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js');
wp_enqueue_script('jquery');

Those handle names are incredibly important, as within your theme's functions.php you'll be adding their counterpart calls of wp_dequeue_style and wp_dequeue_script functions:

// Get out of my page!
wp_dequeue_style('pagination-style');
wp_dequeue_script('jquery');

In the past I've argued that each plugin should make including their styles and scripts optional, but with these simple functions, I'm not as frustrated as I once was.  You'll need to dig into the plugin code to find their script and style handles, but it will be will worth it in the end!