Systems and methods are provided for laying out reflowable content for display, such as content of an electronic book, in a manner that may differ from spacing properties originally defined in a corresponding reflowable file. When an amount of spacing that the reflowable file indicates should be included in a given line exceeds a threshold that is set based at least in part on the available line display length, the layout may be adjusted to decrease the total spacing for the line without adjusting the display size of reflow objects within the line. The adjusted layout may include utilizing a scaled down amount of space relative to the spacing properties defined in the reflowable file, or applying a different alignment type than is indicated by the reflowable file.