The quick answer
| Measure | Aim for | Maximum |
|---|---|---|
| Words | 250–400 | About 450 (500 for senior or academic roles) |
| Pages | Half a page to three quarters | One page |
| Paragraphs | 3–4 | 5 |
| Sentences per paragraph | 2–4 | 5 |
| Reading time | Under 1 minute | About 2 minutes |
If the job posting gives a length ("no more than 300 words", "one page", a character limit on a form), that instruction wins over every rule of thumb. Going over a stated limit is one of the few things that can sink an application before anyone reads it.
Cover letter length by situation
| Situation | Length | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Student, internship or first job | 150–300 words | You have one or two strong examples, not ten. Short and specific beats padded. |
| Mid-level (2–10 years) | 250–400 words | Room for one achievement story and a clear reason for this company. |
| Senior or executive | 350–450 words | More scope to summarize, but readers are busier. Still one page. |
| Career change | 300–400 words | You need a few sentences to explain the move and connect your experience. |
| Academic or research (faculty, PhD, postdoc) | 1–2 pages | Committees expect research, teaching and fit to be covered; follow the department's instructions. |
| Email body (cover letter sent as the email) | 100–200 words | People read email faster and on phones. Attach the full letter only if asked. |
| Job portal text box | Fit the limit, usually 1,000–2,000 characters | Count characters, not words; paste into a counter first. |
A rough conversion: 250 words is about half a page in an 11-point font with normal margins, and 400 words is about three quarters of a page. If your letter spills onto a second page, it is too long, whatever the word count says.
One letter, short and standard length
The easiest way to see what length does is to read the same application written short, standard and long. Here is a letter for a customer support role.
Dear Ms. Alvarez, I'm applying for the Customer Support Specialist role at Brightline. Your payroll product helps small-business owners, and helping those owners when software gets in their way is what I do every day. In two years at Northpeak Software I've answered around 40 chat and email tickets a day, and I kept a 96% satisfaction score while our product doubled its user base. Last spring I rewrote 30 of our help articles in plain English, and tickets on those topics dropped by a quarter. I also cover weekend phone shifts, when queues are longest and patience matters most. I'd bring the same habit to Brightline: solve the problem in front of me, then fix whatever made the customer ask. I'd welcome the chance to talk about how I can support your customers. My resume is attached, and I can start within three weeks. Best regards, Jordan Lee
Dear Ms. Alvarez, I'm applying for the Customer Support Specialist role at Brightline. Your product helps small businesses run payroll without an accountant, and I spend my days helping exactly those owners when software gets in their way. I'd love to do that for a product I already recommend to customers. For the last two years at Northpeak Software I've handled around 40 chat and email tickets a day, with a 96% customer satisfaction score while our user base doubled. I'm the person the team sends the confusing billing cases to, because I take the time to find out what the customer was actually trying to do, not just what they typed. Last spring I noticed the same five questions filling our queue, so I rewrote 30 help-center articles in plain English and added short screen recordings. Tickets on those topics fell by about a quarter within two months, which freed the team for harder problems. I also trained two new hires on our billing system and wrote the checklist we still use for their first week. Once a month I share the top customer complaints with our product team, and two of them have since been fixed in the app. I'd bring that same habit to Brightline: answer the person in front of me well, then fix whatever made them ask. I'd welcome the chance to talk about how I can support your customers. Thank you for your time. Best regards, Jordan Lee
A 350-word version would add one more paragraph, for example about training two new hires or working with the product team on a recurring bug. That is worth it only if the extra paragraph adds a new reason to hire you. If it repeats the same strength in different words, cut it.
Read your letter and ask of every sentence: "Would the hiring manager miss this if it were gone?" If not, delete it. Most letters lose 20–30% this way and get better.
How the words should be split
Length is easier to control when every paragraph has one job:
- Opening (40–60 words): the role, and one line on why you and this company fit.
- Main paragraph (80–150 words): your strongest achievement for this job, with a number.
- Second example, optional (60–100 words): a different strength the posting asks for.
- Close (30–50 words): what you'd bring, a polite ask for a conversation, thanks.
Our guide to cover letter format covers the header, greeting and sign-off, and how to write a cover letter covers what to say in each paragraph.
Signs your cover letter is too long, or too short
Too long
- It runs onto a second page, or you shrank the font or margins to avoid that.
- It repeats your resume job by job instead of picking one or two highlights.
- Paragraphs are longer than five or six lines on the page.
- Two paragraphs make the same point ("I'm a team player", then "I work well with others").
Too short
- It could be sent to any company without changing a word.
- There's no example: no project, no result, no number.
- It never says why you want this job at this company.
- It's under 100 words and the posting asked for a cover letter (rather than leaving it optional).
A letter that's too short usually needs one specific example, not more adjectives. Our cover letter examples show what a full but focused letter looks like for 40 different jobs.
Does the right length change by country?
The one-page rule holds almost everywhere, but expectations differ a little:
| Where | What's normal |
|---|---|
| United States, Canada | 250–400 words, one page. Short and direct is valued. |
| United Kingdom, Ireland | One page, often a little more formal. "Covering letter" means the same thing. A CV is usually two pages, so the letter does the summarizing. |
| Australia, New Zealand | One page. Government and public sector jobs often ask for a separate statement addressing each selection criterion; that is not your cover letter and can run longer. |
| India | Often sent as the email itself, so 150–250 words is common. For campus and fresher roles, keep it to a short paragraph or two. |
| Germany and much of Europe | A one-page letter (Anschreiben) is standard and carefully formatted; length rules are similar, formality is higher. |
Whatever the country, read the job posting first. If it asks for answers to specific questions or criteria, answer each one directly, even if that makes the application longer than a normal letter.
Real examples at the right length
Our example letters are deliberately at the short, focused end: about 115 to 215 words in the body, before the greeting and sign-off. They show how much one strong example can carry. A few to compare:
- Internship cover letter example →Short and specific: what you study, one project, what you want to learn.
- Sales cover letter example →Numbers first, one deal story, a clear ask, in about 115 words.
- Career change cover letter example →Slightly longer, because the move needs explaining.
To write one for a specific job, the AI cover letter generator asks about the posting and your experience and keeps the letter in this range.
Formatting that keeps it to one page
- Font: a standard font at 10.5–12 point (see the best resume fonts; the same advice applies to letters).
- Margins: 0.75 to 1 inch (2–2.5 cm) on every side.
- Spacing: single-spaced lines, a blank line between paragraphs.
- Header: match your resume's header so the two look like a set. Our cover letter templates do this automatically.
- File: PDF unless the posting asks for Word, so the layout doesn't shift.
Don't force a long letter onto one page with a tiny font or narrow margins. Recruiters notice, and the letter becomes harder to read. Cut words instead.