If you can find a copy of George Gopen's The Sense of Structure, you should buy and read it.

The central idea behind the book is simple: Understanding how readers read, and the structural cues they look for to know what to expect from parts of the text, can help writers construct better sentences, paragraphs, and pages.

For example, one expectation that readers have is that the last bit of information in a sentence will be the most important; Gopen calls this the "stress position".

Take a look at these two sentences:

Jack has fallen in love with Jill because she completely understands his passion for raising fox terriers.

Because she completely understands his passion for raising fox terriers, Jack has falled in love with Jill.

In the first, readers feel Jack's raising of fox terriers is being emphasized, and expect that to be the focus of the sentences that follow. In the second, it is Jack's love for Jill that is being emphasized, so readers would be slightly annoyed if the next three sentences were about fox terriers.

The book is unfortunately out of print, but there are a few copies on Amazon at somewhat unreasonable prices.