Fonts, sizes and text styling for ATS – Page 3

Either is understood, but "UAE" without full stops is the more common modern style and is simpler for searches. The same goes for "UK" and "USA". You can also write the full name, "United Arab Emirates", once in your contact line.

Whatever you choose, use the same form for your address and every job location. Mixing "UAE", "U.A.E." and "United Arab Emirates" looks careless.

Write it as it appears on your passport or official documents, and use exactly the same spelling everywhere: resume, application forms, email display name and LinkedIn. Variants such as "Al-Hashimi", "Al Hashimi" and "Alhashimi" may be treated as different names by software, which can split your records.

If a form will not accept a hyphen or space, type the closest version allowed in that field only, and keep your official spelling on the resume.

Avoid most shorthand. Abbreviations like "w/" for "with", "mgmt" for "management" or "dept" for "department" look like notes, and they may not match recruiters' searches for the full words.

Write words in full: "with", "management", "department". Widely used acronyms are a different matter; terms such as "HR", "KPI" or "CRM" are normal on resumes, ideally spelled out once if the reader might not know them.

In an English resume, use standard English quotation marks instead. Keyboards and software set up for French, German or other languages may insert « » or „ " automatically. They are correct in those languages but look out of place in English text, and they occasionally display oddly in some systems.

If you write a resume in French or German, local quotation marks are fine there. Check your language and AutoCorrect settings so each version uses the right style.

It can make structure harder to detect. Some systems may use text size and weight as clues, for example treating a larger bold line as a heading. If sizes vary randomly, those clues become unreliable, and people find the page harder to scan too.

Use a simple, consistent scale:

• Name: the largest text.
• Section headings: one size, the same for every section.
• Job titles: body size or slightly larger, in bold.
• Body text and bullets: one size throughout.
• Small details such as dates: the same as body text or only slightly smaller.

Applying these through paragraph styles keeps everything consistent automatically.

No, use one. Two spaces after a full stop is an old typewriter habit. It does not harm parsing, but it creates uneven gaps in modern fonts, especially in justified text, and it is easy to end up with a mix of one and two spaces.

To clean up an existing document, use Find and Replace in your word processor: search for two spaces and replace them with one, repeating until no matches remain. Check that you have not removed intentional spacing, such as in a plain text version where you used spaces for alignment.

Some tools create bold text by printing the same word twice, slightly offset, instead of using the font's real bold version. This "fake bold" looks fine on the page, but copied or parsed text may repeat each bold word, as in "Project Project Manager Manager".

To fix it:

• Use a font that includes a real bold weight, such as most standard fonts.
• In design tools, choose the bold style from the font list rather than adding an outline or stroke effect.
• Re-export the PDF and run the copy-and-paste test on your headings and job titles.