- Use generous margins and a line length of roughly 60–80 characters. This is the range the eye reads most comfortably.
- One typeface, two weights. Body text at 10–11pt. Headings no more than 4pt larger than the body.
- Section headings do most of the navigational work. Make them clear, consistent, and predictable.
- Bullet points should be one or two lines. Three lines is a paragraph in disguise and gets skipped.
- One page for under ten years of experience. Two pages maximum for everyone else.
Margins and line length
Margin size is the single formatting choice that most affects how readable your resume feels, and yet it is the one most candidates set badly. Too narrow and the page feels cramped and slightly aggressive. Too wide and you waste a quarter of every page on nothing.
A reasonable margin for a standard A4 or US Letter resume is 14mm to 20mm on every side. Advoke CV's templates use 14mm as a default because it makes a full resume fit cleanly on one page without forcing font size down. If your content is short, you can push this to 22mm and the resume will feel more generous. If your content is long, do not go below 12mm — at that point the page starts to feel crowded and the reader subconsciously slows down.
Line length is the second half of this decision. A line of text more than about 90 characters is hard to scan; the eye has to search for the start of each new line. A line under about 45 characters feels choppy and wastes vertical space. Aim for 60 to 80 characters per line. Advoke CV's single-column templates are laid out at that range by default.
Typography
The safest typography for a resume uses a single well-designed typeface in two weights: regular for body text and semibold for headings and emphasis. Two typefaces is also fine (a serif for headings, a sans for the body, or the reverse) if the pairing is deliberate. Three is almost always a mistake.
Body text between 10 and 11.5 points reads cleanly on both screen and paper. Anything smaller than 10pt looks like you are trying to hide content, and it may also drop below the size that some ATS parsers accept. Headings should be between 11 and 14 points — larger than the body, but not so much larger that the resume looks like a flyer.
Line spacing matters as much as size. Line height of 1.4 to 1.5 times the font size is standard for a resume. Cramped line spacing saves space but makes the resume harder to skim, which is the opposite of what you want.
Italics and all-caps should be used sparingly. Italics are harder to read on-screen than regular text and many parsers strip them. All-caps is fine for very short headings and labels but a full sentence in all-caps is uncomfortable to read.
Section headings
Headings are the visual structure of your resume. A reader who is skimming looks for headings first, then reads the content beneath the ones that interest them. If your headings are inconsistent — one uppercase, one title-case, one italic — the skim is harder and the reader slows down or gives up.
Choose a heading style and apply it uniformly. The most common convention is uppercase, small enough to be quiet, with a thin rule underneath or above. Advoke CV's Category A and B templates use exactly this pattern. If you prefer a different style — small-caps, or a bolder weight in title case — commit to it across the document.
Keep the heading text standard. "Experience", "Education", "Skills", "Projects", "Certifications", "Languages", "Awards". This is covered in more detail in the ATS guide, but it applies here too: standard headings are both more parseable and easier for a human to skim.
Bullet structure
Bullet points are the smallest unit of content in a resume, and they are where most of the reading happens. A well-formed bullet has three properties:
- It starts with a strong verb in the past tense (or present tense for a current role).
- It names a specific action, project, or scope.
- It ends with a result — a number, a business outcome, or a change that mattered.
Length matters too. A bullet that runs to three lines has become a paragraph and most readers will skip it. One line is ideal. Two lines is fine if both lines are dense. If you regularly write bullets that run to three or four lines, the fix is usually to split the bullet in two, not to compress the wording.
Count your bullets. For each role, three to five bullets is the usual range. Fewer than three suggests the role was trivial. More than six suggests you are not choosing what to include, which is the reader's signal that you will also not choose what matters in the job.
Dates and chronology
Every date in the experience and education sections should use the same format. Advoke CV defaults to "Month Year – Present" for current roles and "Month Year – Month Year" for past ones. Alternatives that also work: "MM/YYYY – MM/YYYY", "YYYY – YYYY" for roles that lasted at least a year, or "Mon YYYY – Present". Pick one and stay with it.
Reverse chronological order applies to experience, education, projects, and volunteer work. The most recent or current entry goes first. If you have a reason to break this rule — you are a career changer leaning on an older, more relevant role — say so in your summary so the reader understands the ordering.
How long should it be?
The rule of thumb that has held for decades is:
- Under ten years of experience: one page.
- Ten to twenty years: one or two pages, depending on how much of the earlier history is relevant.
- Senior leadership or academic CV: two pages, and for academic CVs, longer is acceptable.
A one-page resume is not a sign of thin experience. It is a sign that you chose what mattered. A three-page resume from someone with twelve years of experience usually contains a first page of recent, relevant work and two pages of history the reader does not need. The reader will spend ninety percent of their time on page one anyway, so page two and three are wasted if they dilute rather than extend the story.
Colour and accents
Modern resumes often use a single accent colour: a restrained blue, teal, burgundy, or navy. This is fine and can help the resume feel current. What it must not do is interfere with reading. Accent colour belongs in headings, rules, and occasionally in a name or the first line of a role, not in the body text.
If in doubt, use a dark navy or charcoal for headings and rules. These look professional in print, in black-and-white photocopies, and when a recruiter prints the resume on an office printer that is low on ink.
The ten-minute checklist
- Look at the page from arm's length. Is it easy to see where one section ends and the next begins? If not, the section headings are too quiet or the spacing is inconsistent.
- Count the fonts. More than two typefaces is a problem. More than three is a red flag.
- Check the dates. Are they consistent? Is the order reverse chronological? Yes to both.
- Read every bullet out loud. If any bullet runs more than two lines, split it or cut it.
- Count the bullets per role. Between three and five for most roles. Fewer for early-career entries, no more than six anywhere.
- Check the file. Save as PDF. Ensure the PDF is one page (or two, if that is your target). Ensure the text is selectable.
- Print it. If you cannot print, view it at 100% zoom. A resume that reads well on screen often has a subtle problem in print, usually too little margin or line spacing that has compressed under a different renderer.
If your resume passes all seven checks, you have done more formatting diligence than most applicants. The remaining improvements come from the content itself.