How Long Should a Cover Letter Be?
Most cover letters run too long. Here's the right word count, the structure that fits it, and when the standard rule changes.
A cover letter should be 250–400 words. That's one page at standard margins and font size, typically three to four short paragraphs. Most hiring managers spend 30–60 seconds on a cover letter during an initial screen. A 400-word letter is at the upper bound of what will be read fully. If yours is longer than that, it will be skimmed — and the parts that get skimmed are exactly the parts you wanted them to read.
The 250–400 word range holds across most professional contexts. There are exceptions (covered below), but if you're applying to a standard corporate, nonprofit, tech, or startup role and your cover letter exceeds 400 words, it needs cuts.
The Three-Paragraph Structure That Fits the Limit
A cover letter needs to do three things: explain why this role matters to you specifically, demonstrate the most relevant thing you've done that maps to what they need, and make a clear ask. Three paragraphs. One job each.
Paragraph 1 — Why this role, at this company, right now. Not a generic "I'm excited to apply." A specific reason: you've used the product, you know the space, you're solving the exact problem they're hiring for. One to three sentences.
Paragraph 2 — Your most relevant accomplishment. One concrete example that demonstrates you can do what this role requires. If the job asks for someone who can manage cross-functional projects, describe a specific cross-functional project you shipped. Include a number if there's an honest one to include. Three to five sentences.
Paragraph 3 — The ask. Short. Express genuine interest in continuing the conversation. Don't thank them for their time before they've spent any — it reads as filler.
This structure gets you to roughly 200–300 words. The remaining 50–100 words comes from specificity: a detail about the company that signals you've done homework, a more precise description of the accomplishment, a concrete reason why this role fits where you're headed.
What to Cut When You're Over 400 Words
Most cover letters that run 600+ words have the same problems.
Generic claims. "I am a results-oriented team player who thrives in dynamic environments" is not a sentence. It's a string of words that conveys nothing. Cut any sentence where the substance could apply to any applicant at any company.
Résumé narration. The cover letter is not a guided tour through your CV. If you're summarizing bullets from your résumé in prose, stop. The reader has your résumé. Use the cover letter to add context the résumé can't show, not to restate it.
Company flattery. One sentence acknowledging the company's work is fine. A paragraph about how impressive their mission is reads as filler and occasionally as sycophancy. Get to the point.
Career change explanations that run long. If you're changing industries or have a gap in your timeline, address it in one sentence and move on. "After three years in operations, I'm transitioning to product management, where my process background directly applies to roadmap prioritization." That's it. A paragraph-long explanation starts to sound defensive.
Industry Variations That Change the Calculus
The 250–400 word rule applies broadly but not universally.
Law firm cover letters can run longer — 500–600 words is accepted, and some partners expect it. Cover letters in legal contexts are writing samples by proxy. A short cover letter at a firm that values written advocacy signals you either didn't know the convention or didn't take the application seriously.
Startup applications skew shorter. Founders and early-stage hiring managers are stretched thin. A crisp, specific 200-word letter that gets immediately to your relevant experience respects that constraint and often reads better than a polished 400-word version.
Government and federal applications frequently specify a page limit in the posting itself. Follow whatever the posting says. Federal applications use structured formats (USAJobs, for example) that have their own conventions for narrative sections.
Academic positions — faculty jobs, postdoc applications, research fellowships — have their own documents (the cover letter, research statement, teaching statement). The cover letter for an academic position is typically a brief one-page framing document, not the primary narrative; the statements do the substantive work.
Email Body vs. Attached PDF
These are different formats with different effective lengths.
If you're pasting your cover letter into an email body, aim for 200–300 words. Email renders differently than a PDF — there's no page boundary, no visual constraint — and longer emails in an initial outreach feel disproportionate. Assume the reader is on their phone.
If you're attaching a PDF, 250–400 words. The visual format of a page signals a more formal document, and the length expectation shifts accordingly.
One practical note: when attaching, filename matters. "Cover_Letter.pdf" is generic. "FirstName_LastName_Cover_Letter.pdf" is searchable and professional. Small thing, but worth doing.
The Font and Margin Trap
A cover letter that hits one page by using 10-point font, 0.5-inch margins, or tight line spacing reads immediately as a letter that needed to be cut. Hiring managers who review many applications notice this. The visual signal is: "I had too much to say and didn't edit."
Standard formatting: 11–12 point, a readable font (Calibri, Georgia, Arial), 1-inch margins, 1.15–1.5 line spacing. If your content doesn't fit at those settings, cut the content.
Referral Cover Letters Are Shorter
If someone inside the company referred you, the dynamics shift. The referral does a significant portion of the persuasion work before the hiring manager even opens your letter. Get to the relevant accomplishment faster. You can drop the "why this company" paragraph to a sentence or skip it entirely — the referral context implies interest.
Target 150–250 words for a referral cover letter. Name the referral in the first sentence ("Sarah Chen suggested I reach out about the product role"), give one specific reason why you're relevant, and make the ask. Done.
Check Length Before You Send
Before you submit, paste your draft into a word counter for cover letters to verify you're in the 250–400 word range. It takes 10 seconds and removes the uncertainty of relying on a word processor that may count differently than you expect.
The length check is also a useful editing pass. If you're at 450 words, you know you need to cut about 60 words — which means one dispensable paragraph or two dispensable sentences in each paragraph. That's a concrete editing task, not an abstract instruction to "tighten it up."
Cover letters fail for two reasons: they're too long, or they're too generic. Both problems come from the same source — writing about yourself in generalities instead of demonstrating one specific thing you've done that the company needs. Fix the substance, and the length usually takes care of itself.