The spacing, usually in the address, of most templates needs to be adjusted. It is best to stick with san serif font that doesn’t have curly edges and is easy to read. Again, the idea of simplicity should be your focus because of the many ways that cover letters and resumes are uploaded and turned in to potential employers.įor this example, I changed the font to Helvetica. Formatting won’t upload or translate well in those cases. Remember that some resumes and cover letters are sent in text only or through a text reader. Use any font and formatting variations sparingly, though. If you are in an industry that places a premium on individuality and creativity, then you can use one font change or styles (like bold or italic). For most cover letters, you want to use the same font throughout. See Figure 3.Īs you go along or all at once, you might want to change the font, size, and style. That is because it is just a placeholder field which is supposed to make it easier for you to select and change or delete the information. You will notice that as you click on any of the letters in the “Street Address, City, ST ZIP Code” text, that it all turns gray. To customize the letter, you can choose to delete some pieces and add other fields that are important to you.įor example, you might want to add your website to the header at the top of the page and remove the physical address information. Once you have the template saved on your computer, you can begin to customize the letter by removing the placeholder text in the document with your information. Once you choose your template, you can click on the Create button on the dialog box. For this example, I just went with the “Resume cover letter (chronological)” template. See Figure 1.Īgain, you are just using the Word template to get started, not to follow exactly. In the search box enter the keywords “cover letter”. You can see all of them by launching Word and then clicking on the File tab and New link on the left.

Microsoft Word has a large assortment of templates.

You can start with a basic Word template, but add your own formatting and design. The best way to approach writing a cover letter is to keep it simple and don’t match everything to a template. There used to be a standard letter format, but even that has changed over the past decade.

If you ask three people for help when writing a cover letter, you will get three different pieces of advice.

Download word cover letter template