page templates

Hello, I have recently discovered this functionality of WP and was wondering if anyone could expand on some of the features…

One thing I’d like to do is what I believe is simply referred to as a page of posts. For any given category or tag I’d like to have a specific page which will list out all the respective posts. I think this is basic with page templates, though I’m not very certain of the coding…

I’m also wondering if it is possible to do some post-processing of posts. For example, can a page template list all posts as one single post, or specify some kind of formatting? Could I remove punctuation in posts under a certain page or change font and spacing? Would it be possible to arrange posts in a specific order on a page, reverse-time order, or alphabetically or length-wise?

Thanks…