What's Your Type?: Using Typeface Appropriately & Effectively

Jennifer Fry
Careerminds Consultant

So, you’re in career transition, and you’ve decided to spruce up your resume and/or compose a cover letter for a job application—great! You’ve also decided that, in order to make your documents stand out from the rest, you’ll type them using Comic Sans—not great! You may think that a font is a font as long as the content is there, but the wrong typeface can communicate more than you think, and it could potentially keep you from landing an interview.

Certain typefaces have the power to convey a recognizable message about your professionalism—Comic Sans doesn’t say “I’m just a fun, quirky personality,” it says “I’m a goofball with no understanding of professional etiquette.”

Moreover, legibility and readability are key when choosing the appropriate font. After all, what good is your resume or cover letter if no one can make out what it says? Legibility describes the ability to distinguish one letter from another, whereas readability describes the ability to compose words in a way that is easy to read. Keeping your resume and cover letter easy on the eyes is just another small step toward reaching your goal (i.e.: the interview, the offer, the new job), and the slightest variations can make all the difference.

Several components contribute to a typeface’s legibility and readability:

• Width of letters: the width should have little variation from letter to letter; fonts with f’s half the width of m’s, for instance, don’t read quite as smoothly. Additionally, the overall height to width ratio of all the letters should be moderate.

• X-Height: the x-height refers to the height of lowercase letters; the taller the x-height, the more dense a typeface will appear and the more difficult it will be to read. Medium x-heights are desirable.

• Mirrors: with some fonts, certain letters are mirror images of one another (d and b, for example), and this quality should be avoided for optimum readability. The more distinct each letter is from the others—the more legible the font is— the easier the text will be to read.

• Quirks: avoid typefaces with quirky little additions to the letters. Small swishes and tails on letters look interesting for a few words, but quickly wear their welcome and become too much for the eyes to focus on.

According to career coaches and graphic designers (aka: the folks who know a thing or two about typefaces and the messages or feelings they imply), a handful of typefaces are universally considered appropriate for resumes and other professional documents including Arial, Helvetica, Futura, and Garamond. Times New Roman, while often the default setting, is widely thought of as boring and unimaginative, leaving your resume looking plain or just like everyone else’s.

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Careerminds provides scalable, strategic solutions to organizations seeking affordable, web-based outplacement services. Using a Web 2.0 e-learning platform that delivers affordable, online career transition services, Careerminds provides a high-tech and high-touch blend of on-demand career transition education supported by senior-level career consultants to help displaced workers reenter the workforce quickly.

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