The information on your CV should stand out. This means that it should not be too small nor too cramped. White space is very powerful in design because it gives power to the little that is there. Packing your page as full as possible makes it visually unattractive and hard to read. Below are some guidelines:

  •  Ensure your margins are 2.5 cm minimum all round (NB: send Page Setup to A4 - the MS Word default is US Letter, which will give you uneven margins on European A4 paper.)
  • Spread out the information. If what you have to say doesn't fill the page, don't leave all the white space at the bottom; put empty lines between sections to separate them more clearly. If you have to have two pages, don't just put the last five lines on page two, spread the sections out a bit - and make sure a section is not split over two pages.
  • Use the width of the page. Few lines of a CV will take the width of the page. If all lines are short, the text will all sit on the left and the result will be unbalanced. If this is the case, allow bigger margins.
  • Do, whenever possible, however, make sure that title lines (such as date, job title, employer) do not wrap (i.e. go onto a second line). This can be achieved either by setting your margins to your longest line or reducing the number of words in that line. Descriptions of duties and skills can wrap if necessary, but make sure that you do not end up with an isolated word or two on a new line. Use (shift+enter) to split the sentence in the place you want without starting a new paragraph.