Issue with typography on The Columnist

Hello!

I write a blog on life as a French expat in London, I give tips on how to get settled here, get a flat that sort of thing and also write about cultural things to do here, local things and places to go etc.

I am trying to make my site looks nicer and I have two issues:

1)Does anyone know if I can alter the fact that on my homepage, when you look at the extracts of my posts, the text under the thumbnail images abruptly stops after one word on the last line before the “Continue Reading” link? I don’t know if this is something I can change and where to change it. Is it a width issue, a number of words issue?

2)I am having the hardest time to make these bits of text look good. I know loads of people think against justifying text but I don’t like at all those unordered pyramid steps that unjustified text gets on one of its sides. What I did is mess with the word-spacing (-0.3) and I know it does look a bit weird so if you have any advice on code that can make my justified text look better, I’d love to try out your suggestions.

Thank you so much to anyone who is willing to help!