Best Resume Fonts and Formatting for 2026

Font and formatting choices on a resume matter less for "looking professional" than for parsing cleanly through an ATS — and the safe zone is wider than most advice online suggests.

Safe fonts

Calibri, Arial, Georgia, Helvetica, Garamond, and — as used across most modern resume templates — clean sans-serifs generally parse and read fine. Avoid script or decorative fonts, and never embed text as an image.

Font size

10.5-12pt for body text, 14-16pt for your name/header. Smaller to fit more in risks readability; larger wastes space that could hold real content.

Single column beats multi-column

A single-column layout is read in the correct order by every ATS. Multi-column and sidebar layouts risk the parser merging unrelated sections into a scrambled block of text.

Margins and white space

0.5-1 inch margins keep the page from feeling cramped while maximizing usable space — don't shrink margins below 0.5 inch just to force more content onto one page; cut content instead.

Consistent bullet style and spacing

Pick one bullet character and one spacing pattern and apply it everywhere. Inconsistency here is a small thing that compounds into an impression of carelessness.