8 Best Fonts to Use on Your Cover Letter

Readability

The cover letter gives hiring managers a glimpse into who you are as an employee. It will tell them all about your specific skills and work experience and why your unique qualities make you the best fit for the job. Hiring managers will often read through dozens of applications a day, so you need to make yours stand out among other candidates.

Legibility is especially important for this letter. You don’t want to spend all your time writing the perfect cover letter for the role, only to get overlooked just because you chose an illegible typeface. Instead, it’s best to stick to the standard, professional looking fonts to get your point across.

Design

The next aspect you need to keep in mind is the overall design. Though you might want to opt for an eye-catching design template on Microsoft Word, less is more on a cover letter. Simplicity not only will appear more professional, but also it can help your application bypass the applicant tracking systems (ATS) that will likely scan your documents first. These systems aren’t typically equipped to read fancy fonts or design elements, so they will reject your application instead of accelerating it to be read by a hiring manager.

Cover letter font size is also important to keep in mind here. You don’t want it so small that it’s illegible just so you can fit more words. Similarly, you don’t want it too large just to write the bare minimum and fill white space. The cover letter is a unique chance to display your skills front and center. You should be able to do an effective job of impressing a hiring manager with your qualifications on a single page.

Other aspects such as italics or underlining should be avoided as much as possible. These can distract a hiring manager and pull their attention away from the content of the letter. Italics should only be used if you mention publications (i.e., The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, etc.).

Overall, you will want to follow this specific cover letter format:

• Header (include all contact information and any links to job networking profiles such as your LinkedIn profile)
• Introduction and hook
• Summarize your most relevant skills and work experience
• Explain why you’re the perfect fit for the job
• Close with a call-to-action for a job interview

If you’re still having trouble writing a cover letter for your next job search, then try using a cover letter builder. These tools have dozens of cover letter templates, cover letter examples and many cover letter tips to help you craft the best cover letter in just minutes.