I have read books/articles on rewriting systems. All of them talk about how to prove termination and confluence, but none of them seem to generalize and present the big picture. I don't really care about the properties of a particular rewriting system. I am looking for milestone results. Let me see if I can acquire the reference you pointed, is it available on the Internet?
You may want to look at the large body of work hat has been done on termination in rewrite systems, where many classes and properties have been identified over the years. I am not an expert but:
The termination hierarchy for term rewriting, Applicable Algebra in Engineering, Communication and Computing, 2001, volume 12, pages 3-19
might be a good starting point,
Doaitse Swierstra