From my point of view there is no wrong way for spring/ fall cleanup. Some people want their yards to look neat when blooming season is done so they remove all of the dead foliage. Now I trim off the tall flower scapes and leave the rest till spring. I find it easier to clean up the dead foliage in the spring when it is all dry, goes so much quicker and easier to dispose etc. This especially true for hosta and Daylilies.

Sherry

What zone are you in?
If I'm growing dormants, I'd wait till spring like Sherry. If you're in zone 8b or south and have primarily evergreens, I'd cut back. It will help control leaf miners and snails.
Ed

Until this year, I trimmed only enough of the leaves so as to leave a tidy fountain of foliage to dry around the crown. But last winter, during the polar vortex, the feral cat that had hung around outside just had to be brought inside - I am sure she would not have survived otherwise. As a result, the vole population in the garden has exploded.

Voles like piles of leaves, foliage, tall grasses, and nice, soft mulch to hide in. So I'm following the advice of some daylily hybridizers and friends and, this year, I'm cutting all the daylily foliage close enough to soil level to destroy vole hiding places. Got to leave those good sight lines for the hawks and owls! I'm also not planning to put down any mulch 'til dead of winter, maybe late January or February.

I'm hoping my more tender/evergreen daylilies from Carpenter, Larry Grace, etc. and plants with a lot of southern genetics in them will do OK. Almost all my daylilies made it through last winter, so there's hope.

I agree with Sherry that spring foliage cleanup is easy. But even though I'm nowhere done with garden cleanup, I'm already liking how tidy some of the beds look.