How long should a cover letter be? Word counts that get read

A cover letter should fit on one page, which for most people means 250 to 400 words in three or four paragraphs. Indeed's career guide gives that same range, and the University of Virginia's economics department tells its students to stay under 400. If your letter is longer, the reader will skim it. If it is much shorter, it usually reads like a form you filled in.

That is the short answer. The useful part is knowing when to move inside that range, when to break out of it, and how to cut a letter that has grown to 600 words without losing the one paragraph that gets you the interview.

Why one page became the rule

A one-page letter respects that. It also forces you to choose. When you only have room for two concrete examples, you pick the two that match the job ad, and the letter gets better because of the limit.

Many companies also paste the letter into an applicant tracking system as plain text, where a long letter turns into a wall of text.

How many words is one page

A page holds more or fewer words depending on the font, the size and the margins. These are realistic numbers for a letter with a header, a greeting and a sign-off:

So a letter of 350 words leaves breathing room, and a letter of 450 words fills the page edge to edge. Recruiters notice the second one before they read a word of it.

Shrinking the font to 9 pt or the margins to 1 cm fools nobody. The page looks crowded and suggests you could not decide what mattered.

Length by situation

Entry-level jobs and internships

Aim for 250 to 300 words. You have less work history, and padding it out with a list of school projects makes the letter weaker. One strong example from an internship or a part-time job does more than four thin ones.

A summer internship application might look like this: an opening that names the role and why that team, one paragraph on a project where you did the kind of work the internship involves, one short paragraph on what you want to learn, and a close.

Experienced hires

300 to 400 words. You have more to choose from, which makes selection harder, not easier. Pick the two results that match the top requirements in the job ad and give each a number, such as a budget you managed or a process you made faster.

Senior candidates sometimes write two pages because they feel one page undersells them. It rarely helps. A director-level letter that stays on one page signals that the writer can summarize, which is part of the job.

Academic and research positions

This is the main exception. Applications for faculty posts, postdocs and some research roles in the US and UK often expect one and a half to two pages, because the letter has to cover research, teaching and fit with the department. Read the posting. If it asks for a "letter of application" with specific sections, follow that structure even if it runs past 600 words.

Cover letters in the body of an email

Shorter, about 150 to 200 words. When you apply by email, the email itself often is the cover letter, and nobody wants to scroll through 400 words in a message window. Keep the core: who you are, which role, one piece of proof, and a line saying your CV is attached.

If the posting asks for a cover letter as an attachment, send a short email and attach the full letter. Do not paste the same 400 words into both.

Federal and public sector jobs

Some public employers do not want a cover letter at all, and the online form decides what they read. Where a letter is accepted, the one-page rule still holds.

What each paragraph should do

Three or four paragraphs cover almost every case.

The opening says which role you are applying for and gives one specific reason you want it. Skip "I am writing to apply for". The reader knows. Start with the reason.

The middle paragraph, or two, is where the letter earns its length. Each one should connect one thing you did to one thing the job needs. A sentence like "I reorganized our shared drive and cut the time the team spent looking for files" is better than "I am highly organized", because it can be checked.

The closing paragraph says what you want next, usually a conversation, and thanks the reader once. Two sentences are enough.

When the application form limits characters

More and more portals replace the letter with a text box. Some allow 2,000 characters, some 4,000, some only 1,000. Characters are not words, and spaces count too.

As a rough guide, English prose averages about 5 to 6 characters per word including the space after it. That makes:

• 1,000 characters: about 170 to 200 words
• 2,000 characters: about 330 to 400 words
• 4,000 characters: about 650 to 800 words

Write the text in a document first, check the character count with spaces in a character counter, then paste it in. Portals that cut text silently at the limit are common, and you will not see that your last sentence is missing.

How to cut a letter that runs long

Most first drafts land between 500 and 700 words. Here is how a 520-word draft for a customer support role came down to 340 without losing anything that mattered.

First, delete the restatements. The draft opened with "I am excited to apply for the Customer Support Specialist position at your company, which I saw advertised on your careers page." Nineteen words that tell the reader what they already know. The new opening, "Your support team answers in four languages, and I have done exactly that for two years at a travel booking site", is longer than nothing but does real work.

Then merge examples that prove the same thing. The draft had separate paragraphs about handling angry customers by phone and by chat. One paragraph with the better example, the chat one, because the role is chat-based, saved about 90 words.

Adjectives that claim instead of show went next. "Highly motivated, detail-oriented and passionate" went, and nothing replaced it. The examples already showed those things.

Last, the CV summary. A paragraph listing previous employers repeated the CV line by line.

After those four passes the letter had three paragraphs and a close. Nothing in it was new. It had just stopped repeating itself.

Can a cover letter be too short?

Yes. A letter under about 150 words, outside email applications, usually means one of two things to the reader: the candidate did not bother, or they used the same short letter for every job. Two sentences of greeting and "please find my CV attached" are not a cover letter.

If you genuinely have little to say, for example because you are changing careers, use the space to explain the change in a sentence and then give one piece of evidence that you can do the new work. That is still 200 words or more.

Checking length before you send

Word processors show a word count, but they often hide the character count with spaces, which is the number portals care about. A dedicated counter shows both at once.

Our free word counter shows words, characters with and without spaces, sentences and paragraphs, and an estimated reading time, and it counts in your browser without a sign-in. Paste the final version in, check that you are inside the range for your situation, and look at the longest sentence it reports. If that sentence runs past 35 or 40 words, split it. Long sentences are where cover letters most often lose the reader.

Then run it through a free grammar checker for typos and missing words, the errors a short letter has no room to hide.

One last check is worth more than any tool: read the letter aloud. Anything you stumble over, the hiring manager will skim.

ByMalcolm ThorneWorkplace writing editorLast updated October 31, 2026