A CV is a professional document; its appearance should be serious and businesslike, without clutter. The following guidelines can help make sure your CV looks neat and serious:

  • Do not use more than a maximum of two different fonts, and these should be standard fonts like Garamond (serif) or Century Gothic (sans serif).
  • Unless your job application is connected to creativity or beauty, avoid decorative fonts.
  • There is a convention that where two fonts are used, headings should be sans serif (e.g. Century Gothic) and text should be serif (e.g. Times or Garamond). However, some CV agencies now suggest you use one sans serif font only.
  • Avoid mixing too many different styles such as bold, italics or underlining.
  • Bold or small caps (small letters replaced by small capitals) can be used for headings, but All Caps (all capital letters), popular in the days of typewriters when all letters were the same size, is now rather clumsy looking.
  • Avoid too wide a variety of point sizes. A good range to use might be 11 pt for basic text, and 12 pt for headings, or if you have a lot to fit in, 11 pt and 10 pt. Don't go below 10 pt.
  • Avoid boxes and lines around text areas as these make the page look cluttered.