How do I adjust the page title for different Section and Entry pages?
The title var can be set in the child templates, that way you can fine-tune it for each section of your site.

Take a look at these default templates:

news/index.html:

{% set title = "News" %}


news/_entry.html:

{% set title = entry.title %}


_layout.html:

The main layout just checks if it has been defined or not:

{% if title is defined %}{{ title }} - {% endif %}{{ siteName }}


.

P.S. Embed templates might be confusing at first, but are really great, check out the docs.