How to re-format post teasers on home page

[kensmith39]

Because I am using long tail keyword phrases in post headlines, the headlines in the post teasers are spilling over into 2nd lines and creating widows at the end of the teasers that don't look good (www.leadgenerationlocal.com).

How can I increase the number of characters in the teasers so I can fill out the extra line and make them look better?

Some teasers end with a "Read more" link and some don't. How can I make all teasers uniformly end with 3 leader dots and then [More...]?

How can I change the link to all posts in a section to not read "Read more posts from (Category)", which often creates 2 lines with a widow, but, instead, read "Read more posts from this section" and use under all sections to keep to 1 line?

Is it possible to change the headline for each teaser to something different from the actual post headline? That way I could fill out the 2 lines for the teaser headline to look good and still keep the actual post headline the same.

I'm a newbie, so step-by-step insructions will be appreciated.

Thanks!

Ken Smith