At least a portion of a plurality of formatting variables associated with an electronic document are modified based in part upon optimized formatting values. A user may specify values for one or more user-modifiable formatting variables. Based on the user data thus specified, at least a portion of the plurality of formatting variables are modified according to corresponding optimized formatting values. The electronic document is then formatted in accordance with the modified formatting variables and provided for display. The user-modifiable variables may comprise a font reference variable and/or a display form factor variable. In this manner, the present invention optimizes readability of electronic documents while still accommodating user preferences for displaying such documents.