Best Resume Fonts, Font Size and Margins

There is no single best resume font, but there is a short list of safe ones. Pick a font that is installed on almost every computer, has clear letters at 10 to 12 points, and comes in regular and bold weights. Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Garamond, Georgia, Cambria and Times New Roman all pass that test, and career offices such as MIT's UPOP program and Eastern Washington University name fonts from this list.

The default font in your word processor is also fine. Current Microsoft 365 versions of Word default to Aptos and Google Docs defaults to Arial, and both read cleanly. A hiring manager will not pass on you for a common font. They will notice text that is cramped, tiny or hard to scan.

Times New Roman is a style call rather than a rule. Readers and applicant tracking systems handle it without trouble, but its narrow letters look dense at small sizes, and the AARP Foundation's resume advice for job seekers over 50 calls it outdated. If you want a serif look, Georgia or Cambria gives the same tone with more open letters.

Serifs are the small strokes at the ends of letters, as in Times New Roman. Sans-serif fonts such as Arial and Calibri leave them off. The Purdue Online Writing Lab notes that sans-serif fonts are typically used for headings and titles, serif fonts for descriptions, and that you should generally use no more than two fonts on a resume.

Both styles work. Sans-serif fonts look clean on screens, which is where most resumes are first read, and suit tech, healthcare, operations and most corporate roles. Serif fonts carry a traditional tone that fits law, academia, publishing and some finance roles.

The simplest setup is one font family for everything, with bold and size doing the contrast work. If you pair two fonts, use one for headings and one for body text, and never switch fonts inside a section.

Set body text between 10 and 12 points. That range appears in guidance from Eastern Washington University and MIT, and OPM's guidance for federal applicants suggests 10-point main text with 14-point titles. Eastern Washington University suggests making your name 4 to 8 points larger than the body text and main headings about 2 points larger.

Point size is not equal across fonts. Garamond at 11 points looks noticeably smaller than Arial at 11 points because its lowercase letters are shorter, so fonts with small letters usually need 11.5 or 12 points. Arial, Calibri and Aptos read well at 10.5 to 11.

Do not shrink the text below 10 points to fit one page. Cut the weakest bullet, rewrite lines that wrap by one or two words, or reduce older roles to a single line. Those edits recover more space than a smaller font, and the page stays readable.

Use margins between 0.5 and 1 inch, the same on every side. Eastern Washington University's career center gives exactly that range, the UC Santa Barbara economics career guide uses 0.5 to 1.0 inch, and OPM suggests 0.5-inch margins for federal resumes.

One inch is the default in Word and Google Docs and gives the most white space. Drop to 0.7 or 0.5 inch if you need room, but not lower: many printers cannot print right to the edge of the sheet, and a page with no border looks crowded on screen too.

Keep the left and right margins equal. Uneven margins are a common side effect of squeezing a resume onto one page, and they make the printed page look off-center.

Single spacing, or up to 1.15, keeps a resume compact and readable. Add 6 to 12 points of space before each section heading and a few points between jobs, so the reader can see where one entry ends and the next begins.

Left-align body text. Eastern Washington University's career center notes that left-aligned text is easier to read and skim, while justified text stretches the gaps between words in short lines. Right-align dates with a tab stop rather than spaces so they line up down the page.

Keep text black on white. Bold job titles, use italics sparingly for employers or dates, and skip underlining except for links. MIT's UPOP guidelines list multiple fonts, underlining, graphics and colors as over-formatting to avoid.

Applicant tracking systems read the text in your file, not its looks, so a standard font in a normal Word or PDF file is not a problem. Trouble comes from how the text is built rather than which common font you picked. These are the usual culprits:

• Text inside images, logos or a screenshot of a resume cannot be read as text at all.
• Icon fonts used for phone, email and location symbols can turn into stray characters when the file is parsed.
• Decorative fonts with unusual joined letters (ligatures such as "fi" and "fl") can come through as missing or wrong characters in some PDFs.
• A downloaded font sent in a Word file gets replaced on the reader's computer, which shifts line breaks and can push text onto a second page.

Avoid fonts that draw attention to themselves or slow reading down: script and handwriting fonts (Brush Script, Lucida Handwriting), novelty fonts (Comic Sans, Papyrus), monospaced fonts such as Courier that waste width, and condensed fonts like Arial Narrow used to cram in more words.

Skip light and thin weights too. Roboto Light or Helvetica Neue Thin look elegant on a large monitor but fade on a laptop at 10 points and nearly disappear when printed or photocopied.

Designers and other creative applicants can use a distinctive font for their name or headings if it matches their portfolio, but keep body text in a plain, readable font. The portfolio is where you show range.

To check any font choice, open your PDF, select all the text, copy it and paste it into a plain text editor. If the words come out in order with no odd symbols, software can read them too.

1. 1

   Set the margins

   In Word, go to Layout, Margins, Custom Margins. In Google Docs, open File, Page setup. Enter the same value between 0.5 and 1 inch for all four sides.

2. 2

   Set the body font and size

   In Word, open the Font dialog (Ctrl+D), choose the font and size, then select Set As Default. In Google Docs, format one paragraph, then use Format, Paragraph styles, Normal text, Update to match.

3. 3

   Create one heading style

   Make every section heading the same: bold, body size or up to 14 pt, with 6 to 12 pt of space above it.

4. 4

   Set line spacing

   Use single spacing or 1.15 for body text and a few points of space after each job entry.

5. 5

   Export and check the PDF

   Save as PDF, open it, confirm the page count, then copy all text into a plain text editor to make sure it comes out clean and in order.

• Resume Format Guide: How to Choose One
• What should a resume look like?
• How long should a resume be?
• Free ATS-friendly resume templates
• How we test our templates
• Resume Paper: Weight, Color, Cotton and Where to Print

We opened every page below on that date. Pay, rules and requirements change, so check the source before you rely on a detail.

1. Eastern Washington University Career Center: Develop Your Resume (body text 10-12 pt, name 4-8 pt larger, margins 0.5-1 inch, left alignment, single spacing)
2. MIT Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program (UPOP): Resume Guidelines (one font, 10-12 pt, 0.5-1 inch margins, fonts to use, over-formatting to avoid)
3. UC Santa Barbara Department of Economics, Career Connection: Career Connection Resume Guide (margins 0.5-1.0 inch, readable font list)
4. U.S. Office of Personnel Management: Agency Guidance on the Two-Page Limit on Resume Length (federal resume font suggestions (Lato and others), 0.5-inch margins, 10 pt body and 14 pt titles)
5. Purdue Online Writing Lab: Résumé Design (serif vs sans-serif, no more than two fonts, consistency)
6. AARP Foundation: Resume Do's and Don'ts for Workers Over 50 (Arial or Garamond suggested; Times New Roman considered outdated)
7. Microsoft Support: Change the default font in Word (steps to set a default font and size in Word)