Cover Letter Format: Layout, Spacing, and Structure That Reads Well

Most cover letter advice is about what to say. This is about how the page should be built — margins, order, spacing, sign-off — which is a separate problem and a much faster one to solve. Get it right once and it applies to every letter you send afterwards. For the writing itself, our guide to writing a cover letter is the companion piece, and our cover letter examples show finished ones. If you want the layout handled for you, our cover letter templates are built to sit alongside your resume, and our guide to matching the two visually explains why that matters more than it sounds. The first question people ask — how long — is answered in how long a cover letter should be, and the full cover letter collection has the rest.

The order of the page

A cover letter has a conventional sequence. Deviating from it doesn't look creative, it looks like something's missing:

1. Your name and contact details — top of the page, matching the header on your resume
2. The date
3. The recipient's name, title, and company — omit the block entirely if you genuinely can't find a name; a half-filled one looks worse
4. The greeting — Dear Ms. Achebe,
5. Opening paragraph — the role you're applying for and why you
6. Body — one or two paragraphs of evidence
7. Closing paragraph — what you'd like to happen next
8. Sign-off and name — Sincerely, then your name

That's it. No headline graphics, no skills bars, no photo.

Page setup

Margins: 1 inch (2.54 cm) on all sides. Drop to 0.75 inch only if you're slightly over and can't cut further — below that the page starts to feel cramped.

Font: the same one as your resume, at 10.5–12pt. This is the single easiest way to make the two documents look like a set. A different font on each reads as two unrelated documents that arrived together.

Alignment: left-aligned body text. Justified text creates uneven word spacing and "rivers" of white space down the page, which looks worse at exactly the size a letter is read at.

Line spacing: single, with a blank line between paragraphs. Don't indent paragraph first lines — modern business letters use block paragraphs, and doing both looks like a formatting accident.

Length: one page, always. Three to four short paragraphs, roughly 250–400 words.

Spacing that makes it look finished

The difference between a letter that reads as professional and one that reads as thrown together is usually vertical rhythm rather than anything you wrote:

• One blank line between your contact block and the date
• One between the date and the recipient block
• One between the recipient block and the greeting
• One between each paragraph
• Two blank lines between the sign-off and your typed name if you're printing and signing; one if you're not

Consistent gaps matter more than the exact size of them. What looks wrong is a page where some gaps are twice others for no visible reason.

Matching it to your resume

Treat the two as one submission. Same font, same margins, same header treatment, same accent colour if you use one. When a recruiter opens both, the pair should look like they were made by the same person for the same job — which our guide on matching your cover letter to your resume goes into properly.

Saving and sending

Export as PDF unless the posting asks otherwise, for the same layout-stability reasons as a resume — our PDF versus Word guide covers the exceptions. Name it the way you named your resume: Jordan-Reyes-Cover-Letter.pdf.

If you're sending by email and no separate letter was requested, put the letter in the body of the email instead of attaching it. Our guide to emailing a resume covers how that changes the structure.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need the recipient's address block at all? It's traditional and still standard in formal sectors — law, government, academia. In tech and startups it's frequently dropped. If you can't find a real name and address, leave the block out rather than filling it with placeholders.

What if I don't know the hiring manager's name? "Dear Hiring Manager," is fine. Avoid "To Whom It May Concern," which reads as dated, and avoid guessing — a wrong name is worse than a neutral greeting.

Should the cover letter have a header design like my resume? A matching contact header, yes. Decorative elements beyond that, no — a cover letter is a letter, and heavy design on one reads as trying too hard.

Can it go onto a second page? No. If it doesn't fit on one page, the writing needs cutting rather than the margins.

Does the format change for an emailed letter? Yes — drop the date and address blocks entirely, since an email already carries that metadata. Start at the greeting and keep everything else the same.