This disclosure involves selecting and applying font features to improve the layout of text. For example, a computing system receives initial text. The computing system calculates an improvement metric representing a layout improvement of a font feature applied to the initial text. The font feature includes replacing a first glyph with a second glyph. The font feature, when applied to the initial text, may result in a layout improvement, which can be quantified using the improvement metric. Based on the calculated improvement metric, the computing system applies the font feature to the initial text to generate updated text. The computing system generates, for display on a display device, the updated text.