Resume fonts, sizes and margins that actually work

Fonts are a readability decision, not a style one

Nobody was ever hired for a font — but candidates are skimmed in ~7 seconds, and a cramped or ornate page loses information in that window. The goal: maximum legibility at a glance, zero parsing risk, no distraction from the content.

Safe choices that never hurt you

Sans-serif: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Lato, Open Sans. Serif: Georgia, Garamond, Cambria, Times New Roman (dated but harmless). All ship with or embed cleanly into PDFs, render identically across systems, and parse as plain text.

Fonts to avoid, and why

Script and display fonts (Pacifico, Comic Sans, Papyrus) read as unserious. Ultra-thin weights disappear in print and scans. Obscure downloaded fonts may not embed in your PDF — the receiving system substitutes something else and your layout shifts. Icon fonts for contact symbols parse as garbage characters.

The size window: 10.5–12pt body

Below 10.5pt, recruiters strain and printed copies blur; above 12pt, body text looks padded. Name: 18-24pt. Section headings: 12-14pt. If you’re shrinking below 10.5 to fit one page, cut content instead — a readable page beats a complete one.

Margins: 0.5 inch is the floor

0.75-1 inch reads best; 0.5 inch is the working minimum before pages look wall-to-wall and some printers clip edges. Never fake space with 0.3-inch margins and 9pt text — recruiters recognize the trick instantly, and it reads as "couldn’t prioritize".

Line spacing and white space

1.0-1.15 line spacing within bullets, a visible gap between sections and entries. White space is what makes a 7-second skim land on the right things — a dense page hides your best bullet as effectively as deleting it.

What the ATS actually sees

Parsers read text, not typography: font choice, size and color are invisible to them. What breaks parsing is structure — text converted to images or outlines, icon fonts, and text boxes. Any real text in a standard font parses; the "ATS-safe font list" fear is mostly myth, the structure risk is not.

Bold, italics and color — where they help

Bold for names, titles and section headings; italics sparingly for company descriptors; one accent color for headings if you like. All parse fine as real text. What doesn’t: relying on color alone to convey meaning, or highlighting so much that nothing stands out.

Consistency beats beauty

One font family (or one serif + one sans pairing), one body size, one date format, one bullet style. Recruiters can’t articulate why a mixed-format resume feels off — but it does, and it reads as carelessness before they’ve read a word.

Print and screen both matter

On-site interviewers still print resumes. Check yours at 100% zoom on a laptop and as a physical printout: thin grays vanish on paper, 10pt text that looked fine on a 27-inch monitor doesn’t on A4/Letter. Dark text on white remains the only safe bet.

PDF export is where fonts break

Export as PDF with fonts embedded (any mainstream builder or word processor does this by default) and open the file once before sending — a substituted font shows up immediately as shifted layout. If a portal demands DOCX, stick to system fonts so the receiving machine renders what you saw.

Or let the template decide

All 25 RezUp templates use pre-tested font pairings, sizes and margins that pass ATS parsing and print cleanly — with S/M/L text and spacing controls inside the safe ranges, so you can compress to one page without breaking the rules above.