Simple cover letter

Four paragraphs, your contact details at the top, no graphics. A cover letter is read by a person if it is read at all, so the only job the format has is to not get in the way.

What this layout usually means

  • Your name and contact details at the top, as text
  • The date and the company, then a greeting to a named person where you have one
  • Three or four short paragraphs, no bullet list
  • A sign-off, and nothing after it

What happens when a machine reads it

Not an opinion about design. These are the things a text extractor does with a page, and you can watch ours do them to your own file at the bottom of this page.

Pasted into a form
Most application forms take a cover letter as a text box rather than a file. Anything that depends on formatting is lost, so the letter has to work as plain text.
The opening line
"I am writing to express my interest in the position" is the most common opening in the category and says nothing. The first line is the only one reliably read.

Reads cleanly

Use this. A cover letter is a piece of writing, not a document design, and the simple format is the one that survives being pasted into a box.

Write one instead

Our builder writes the structure above, exports as PDF, Word or plain text, and shows you what a parser reads back as you type. Free, no account, and the download is not the paywall.

Open the free builder

Or check the one you have

Drop it here and see the text a screening system gets — which sections it finds, which it loses, and what it decides you do for a living. Read in this tab; nothing is uploaded.

Your file is read by code running in this tab. It is never sent anywhere, and we never see it. Open your browser’s network tab and drop it again — you will see no upload.