My general advice here for you and many others in this thread would be to switch to Context (or even Luametatex if you really want to make some truly crazy stuff, basically it's just a newer and more experimental version of Context) if you are not happy with things and like to do your own customizations and don't bother becoming a TeX wizard. Latex is super if you are fine with the template you are provided or you absolutely need some obscurish package, otherwise Context is similar enough and bending it to your will is pretty much how it's supposed to be used.