Physics of Writing: Theory of Words and Paragraphs

I read in Physics Today last November 2011 that physicists have discovered the physics of writing:

The team, led by Ho-Young Kim of Seoul National University, considered two scenarios: the blot and the line. With the pen stationary, the researchers identify four main factors that affect the flow of ink: the capillary pull of the pen; the capillary pull of the pores in the paper; the surface tension of the ink; and the viscosity of the ink. When it is moving, the speed of the pen is a fifth factor.

 But I do not interpret the phrase "physics of writing" in the same way.

For me, the physics of writing is the science behind the art of writing: what is the best way to combine words to form phrases, sentences, and paragraphs given the background of both the author and the audience?  There may be some rules akin to Fermat's Principle of Least Time.  This principle, which states that light takes the path between two points $A$ and $B$ in such a way that time is shortest, can be used to prove the laws of reflection and refraction.  In the case of writing, we may also invoke Strunk and White's Principle of Least Words: "Omit needless words."  The dictum itself serves as its own example.

I think the physics of writing has already been with us starting from our grammar rules.  Unless you are a poet and you know what you are doing, you may break these rules from time to time.  There are also rules for style.  Copy-editors can spot style problems and fix them on the spot.  For example, you don't put an apostrophe here, a comma there, and oh--that should be a dash and not a colon. That's a wrong spelling, that is not Helvetica size 12, and references should include page numbers.  And so on.  But beyond grammar and style rules, there is the form of the writing itself.

In Platonic philosophy, forms are abstractions of material things.  In Physics, we refer to a formalism as something which translates physical reality into equations which can be manipulated to derive new results and predict new possibilities or realities.  The Maxwell's equations are examples of forms.  Dynamos, transformers, transistors, LED screens, radio communication, GPS navigation, electromagnetic pulse bombs, electromagnetic railgun are new realities or technologies derived from Maxwell's equations.

The forms of sentences and paragraphs became critical factors in the rise of Search Engines, such as that of Google.  Search engines try to guess the relevance of a particular article basing only from the keywords typed in the search bar. Search engines can measure keyword density (word phrase occurrence divided by total words or phrase in the article), inter-keyword distance, and other word analysis metrics.

I am interested in word content metrics, but not for search engine optimization.  Rather, I am interested in word content metrics to help physicists write better, such as the paragraph lengths and frequency of personal pronouns  in the Flesh Reading Ease Score and the Rudolf-Kincaid Grade Level.  I am also interested on sentence diagrams and I wish to extend these to paragraph diagrams, using something similar to Feynman diagrams.  I really believe that there is a physics to good writing; otherwise, it can't be taught.  Writing is an art. And all art is founded on science.