Before a hiring manager reads a single sentence, the format has already told them something: is this dense and hard to scan, or clean and easy to get through in thirty seconds?
The rules here are narrower and more forgiving than resume formatting — but a few specific numbers are worth getting exactly right.
Margins and spacing
Standard 1-inch margins on all four sides — the same default nearly every word processor starts with. There’s rarely a good reason to shrink them to fit more text; if your letter doesn’t fit within standard margins, it’s a length problem, not a margins problem.
Single-space within each paragraph, with a blank line between paragraphs rather than a first-line indent — that’s the convention a reader expects from a business letter, digital or not.
Font choice and size
Use the same font as your resume. Beyond consistency, the safe options are the same ones that work well on a resume: Calibri, Arial, or Georgia, at 10.5-12pt for the body text.
Skip anything decorative — a cover letter is not the place to introduce a font your resume doesn’t already use. If you haven’t settled on a resume font yet, this guide to resume fonts covers the safe choices in more depth.
Length: 250-400 words, one page
This is the number worth memorizing: 250-400 words, three to four short paragraphs, one page. Not a hard technical limit — a ResumeGenius survey of 625 US hiring managers put the preferred length at around 400 words — but past that, even a strong pitch starts losing the reader’s attention.
If your draft is running long, it’s almost always because it’s trying to prove more than one thing. Cut it back to one real example and a direct ask, and the length problem usually solves itself.
A cover letter that runs two full pages doesn’t read as more thorough — it reads as unedited, which is a worse impression than being slightly less comprehensive.
The structure, paragraph by paragraph
Business-letter convention still applies, even in a document nobody prints and mails:
Standard cover letter structure, top to bottom
- Your name and contact information
- Date (optional in a digital-first application, but standard for a PDF attachment)
- Employer’s name and address, if you have it
- A formal salutation
- Opening paragraph — one specific line proving you’re not sending a form letter
- Body paragraph — one real, measurable achievement tied to the role
- Closing paragraph — a direct ask for the interview
- Sign-off and your name
For the actual wording at each of these steps — opening lines, salutations when you don’t have a name, and sign-offs — see cover letter openings, salutations & sign-offs, with examples.
Why single-column, always
Unlike a resume, a cover letter is read start to finish, in order, by a human — it isn’t typically run through the same section-by-section parsing an ATS applies to a resume. That still doesn’t make a multi-column layout a good idea here.
A cover letter’s whole job is to be read quickly and linearly. Any layout choice that makes the reader’s eye jump around — a sidebar, a pull-quote box, a two-column split — works against the one thing the format needs to do well.
Does ATS formatting even apply to a cover letter?
Not in the same way it applies to a resume. Most applicant tracking systems parse a resume into structured fields — job titles, dates, skills — because that’s what a recruiter later searches by. A cover letter is usually stored as an attachment and read as-is by a person, not broken into searchable fields the same way.
That doesn’t make formatting irrelevant, though — it just changes why it matters. A cleanly formatted cover letter still needs to open correctly, render properly across devices, and look intentional rather than broken. And on the rare system that does extract text from it (some platforms scan cover letters for keyword matches too), the same plain-text, single-column safety rules apply as they would to a resume.
Match it to your resume’s specific template
The format above is the universal baseline. The specific look — header style, accent color, exact spacing — should mirror whichever resume template you’re pairing it with.
Browse by style to find the matching pair:
- ATS cover letter templates — the most conservative option, built to mirror an ATS-friendly resume exactly
- Professional cover letter templates — traditional formatting for corporate and formal industries
- Modern cover letter templates — a cleaner, more contemporary header treatment
- Simple cover letter templates — minimal styling, maximum focus on the writing
- Creative cover letter templates — more visual presence, for design, brand and agency applications
- PDF cover letter templates — ready to export exactly as designed
File format: export as a text-based PDF
Unless the application instructions specifically request a Word document, export as a PDF. It preserves your exact formatting across every device and email client, and stays readable if it does get scanned by software.
Avoid a scanned image or a screenshot saved as a PDF — that extracts as blank or garbled text if anything does try to read it, the same failure mode covered in more depth for resumes.
When you’re pasting it into an email body instead
Some applications ask you to paste your cover letter directly into an email or a text box rather than attach a file. The content stays the same, but a few format rules change.
Drop the formal header entirely — your name, the date, and the employer’s address are redundant once they’re already visible in the email’s own header. Start directly with the salutation. Keep paragraph breaks as blank lines rather than indents, since indentation often doesn’t survive being pasted into a plain-text field. And skip any bold or italic styling unless you’ve confirmed the field actually renders it — in a plain-text box, formatting codes sometimes show up as literal symbols instead of being applied.
The formatting mistakes worth watching for
A handful of format-specific errors show up more often than the rest — inconsistent spacing between paragraphs, a font size that shrinks mid-document to force a fit, margins narrowed past a point that looks intentional. For the full list with before-and-after fixes, see 25 cover letter mistakes that get applications rejected.
Ready to write your cover letter?
Write a job-ready cover letter in minutes with our AI-powered builder.
Create Cover Letter
FAQ
What margins should a cover letter use?
Standard 1-inch margins on all sides — the default in every major word processor. If your content doesn’t fit, shorten the letter rather than shrinking the margins.
What font size should a cover letter be?
10.5-12pt for body text, matching whatever font and size your resume uses. Consistency between the two documents matters more than the specific choice.
How long should a cover letter be?
250-400 words, three to four short paragraphs, one page. There’s no hard cutoff, but attention drops off noticeably past that length.
Should a cover letter be single-spaced or double-spaced?
Single-spaced within each paragraph, with a blank line between paragraphs. Double-spacing throughout reads as padding a short letter to look longer.
Does a cover letter need to match my resume’s exact design?
Yes, ideally — same font, similar header treatment, consistent overall tone. A cover letter that looks like it came from a different application reads as an afterthought.
Can a cover letter be longer than one page?
Technically nothing enforces a hard limit, but going past one page is a strong signal to cut content rather than a size worth defending. Almost no cover letter genuinely needs two pages to make its case.
Does a cover letter need to be ATS-friendly like a resume?
Less strictly, since most systems store it as an attachment rather than parsing it into fields. It’s still worth keeping single-column and plain-text-based, since some platforms do scan it for keywords, and a broken layout looks unintentional to any human who opens it either way.
Should I use a template or write a cover letter from a blank document?
A template removes the formatting decisions — margins, spacing, header style — so you can focus entirely on the writing. Starting from a blank document isn’t wrong, but it’s easy to drift from standard conventions without noticing.
Do I need a formal header if I’m pasting my cover letter into an email?
No — drop it. Your name and the date are already visible in the email’s own header, so repeating them at the top of the message is redundant. Start directly with the salutation instead.
