Layout: paper size, margins, and date formats

The Layout tab, one control at a time. Alignments, page setup, list formatting, date formats, and links.

Everything on this page lives in the Layout tab of the left panel, and every change shows in the preview as you make it. The tab holds five groups: Alignments, Page Setup, List Formatting, Date Formats, and Links.

Layout controls where things sit. Fonts, sizes, and color are in the Styles tab, covered in Templates, fonts, and spacing.

Image coming soon

Alignments

There are three settings here, each with a small preview of what it does.

Header alignment puts your name and contact details Left, Center, or Right. Center is the most common choice for a professional layout, and it is what most of the templates start on.

Date alignment decides whether dates sit against the right edge of the page or inline next to the company or institution name, and Location alignment does the same for locations.

The Minimal template starts both of those on Left, which suits its inline style. Every other template starts them on Right.

Page setup

Paper size

Two options: Letter (8.5 x 11 inches) and A4 (210 x 297 mm).

Letter is standard in the US and A4 almost everywhere else, so pick whichever is used where you are applying. New resumes start on Letter.

Margins

Margins are two sliders rather than a set of presets. Side Margins and Vertical Margins each run from 0.25 to 1.00 inches in steps of 0.05, and new resumes start at 0.50 on both. Anywhere between 0.5 and 0.75 is the range worth staying inside.

Below 0.4 you are pushing text close enough to the edge that some printers clip it, and above 0.75 you are buying white space with content.

Margins are the fastest way to pull a resume back onto one page, followed by body font size in the Styles tab.

Date formats

Four formats, and the option label is the example:

  • January 2024
  • Jan 2024
  • 01/2024
  • 2024

Set them all at once with the global row, or set them per section. Seven sections carry dates: experience, education, certificates, projects, volunteer, awards, and publications.

Where sections disagree, the global row reads Custom, which is a status rather than a choice you can select. Pick a real format there and it applies to every section at once.

Date ranges are joined with a hyphen, and an open ended range ends in Present.

List formatting

Per-section control over how five list-style sections are laid out: Skills, Languages, Interests, Certificates, and References.

For each of them:

  • Density is Comfortable (one entry per line), Compact (entries run together with a separator), or Condensed (the entry name only, with its details dropped).
  • Bullet picks the glyph, from bullet, dash, square, circle, chevron, arrow, check, or none. It applies to Comfortable only.
  • Between fields is the separator between an entry and its detail, so Spanish: Fluent or Spanish | Fluent.
  • Between entries is the separator used when entries share a line, so it applies to Compact and Condensed.

Skills gets two extra controls, because it is usually the densest block on the page. Layout is List, Columns, or Inline, and Columns sets 2, 3, or 4 of them.

Controls that do not apply to your current density are grayed out with a note saying why, rather than disappearing, so you can see what the other densities would give you.

All of this renders identically in the preview, in your PDF, and in your DOCX.

One switch, Hyperlinks, decides how your profiles and website appear. It starts on, which renders them as clickable links, and turning it off renders them as plain text URLs instead.

Turn it off if you expect your resume to be printed, since a blue underline carries no information on paper.

Two things to look for elsewhere

A page count. The preview shows real pages at real size, so that is where you count them. It lays out up to 25 pages, which no resume should ever reach.

Line height and section spacing. Both of those live in the Styles tab.

One thing to know before exporting

Your PDF takes its paper size from the preview you are looking at, while your DOCX reads the paper size saved on the resume. If you change paper size and go straight to Download DOCX without saving, you can get a Letter file from an A4 preview. Saving first keeps the two in step.