Clean, basic & traditional letters · Word & Google Docs

Simple Cover Letter Templates

Five clean, single-column cover letter templates with no graphics, sidebars, or color blocks — just correct business-letter structure, careful typography, and room for your words. Simple is the default choice for a reason: it's the most ATS-safe shape a letter can take, it suits every industry from law to logistics, and it puts all the attention on what you say. Open in Word or Google Docs, free.

The clean five

Five simple templates, zero decoration.

Classic Centered in navy or rust, the bare Minimalist, and Formal Serif in navy or sage. All single-column, all standard fonts, all one page — the letter shapes every parser and every hiring manager reads without friction.

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Classic Centered — Navy

A formal serif letterhead with a centered name and contact line — timeless and right for any industry.

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Word Google Docs

Classic Centered — Rust

The classic centered letterhead in warm terracotta — the same timeless structure with a touch more warmth.

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Word Google Docs

Minimalist — Charcoal

Airy, letter-spaced, and full of whitespace — the plainest layout in the library, and the one that lets your words do all the work.

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Word Google Docs

Formal Serif — Navy

A serif name framed by thin rules — understated and traditional, ideal for law, finance, government, and academia.

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Word Google Docs

Formal Serif — Sage

The rule-framed formal layout in deep sage green — quiet, composed, and conservative without defaulting to blue.

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Example \u00b7 The letter inside

What the simple letter says.

Read it in full

Jordan A. Bennett

[City, State] · (000) 000-0000 · your.email@email.com · in/yourname

[Month Day, Year]

[Hiring Manager Name]
[Title]
[Company Name]
[Company Address]

Dear [Hiring Manager Name],

I am writing to express my strong interest in the [Position Title] role at [Company Name]. With [X years] of experience in [your field] and a track record of [key strength or achievement], I am confident I would be a valuable addition to your team.

In my current role at [Current/Previous Company], I [describe a key responsibility and a measurable result — e.g., managed X and improved Y by Z%]. I am particularly drawn to [Company Name] because of [specific reason — mission, product, reputation], and I am excited by the opportunity to bring my skills in [relevant skills] to your organization.

Beyond my technical qualifications, I pride myself on [a relevant soft skill or value — e.g., collaboration, reliability, problem-solving]. I am confident that my background and enthusiasm align well with what you are looking for in this position.

Thank you for considering my application. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss how my experience can contribute to [Company Name]'s continued success, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Jordan A. Bennett

This is the actual text inside the Jordan A. Bennett template above — every [bracketed prompt] is a spot you replace with your own detail. Copy the template to keep the letterhead, or use the text as a sample for your own letter.

Why plain wins

The case for the simple cover letter.

The cover letter is the one document in your application where design can only lose the game, never win it. Three reasons the plain layout is the strong default:

Parsers love a single column. ATS portals extract text most reliably from one-column documents with standard fonts. No sidebar to misread, no text box to skip — everything you wrote arrives intact.
It reads in one pass. A hiring manager gives a letter well under a minute. A plain page with clear paragraphs delivers your opening, your evidence, and your close with zero visual detours.
It can’t be wrong for the room. A colorful letter can misjudge a conservative employer; a clean one is never a misread. When you can’t see the room, dress neutral.

The trade-off is honest: a simple letter offers nowhere to hide. With no design to carry it, the first paragraph has to be specific and the middle has to have a number in it. That’s not a weakness of the format — it’s the format telling you where the work is.

Five minutes

Fill it in.

Open a template in Google Docs or download the Word file.
Replace the [brackets]: role, company, your two or three results, and the company-specific sentence.
Keep the fonts and spacing exactly as they are — the restraint is the design.
Export a PDF and pair it with a clean professional resume.

Plain questions

Simple cover letter FAQ

When is a simple cover letter the right choice?

More often than not. Choose simple when the field is conservative (law, finance, government, academia, healthcare administration), when the application goes through an ATS portal, when you're senior enough that decoration would undercut gravitas, or when you simply aren't sure — nobody has ever been rejected for a letter that was too clean. Reach for a designed template only when the industry itself is visual or the employer's own materials are colorful.

Are simple templates safer for ATS screening?

Yes, structurally. Applicant tracking systems parse plain single-column text most reliably; sidebars, text boxes, and multi-column headers are where parsing occasionally garbles content. Every template on this page is a single-column business letter with standard fonts — the safest possible shape. That said, ATS software reads the letter's text more than it scores its beauty; the bigger ATS lever is echoing the posting's keywords in your body paragraphs.

What's the difference between these and a 'basic' letter I could type myself?

Typography and spacing, mostly — which is exactly what's hard to get right from a blank document. These templates handle the letterhead hierarchy, margins, line spacing, and business-letter structure (date, recipient block, salutation, closing) so the result reads polished rather than typed-in-a-hurry. The content prompts in [brackets] also structure the letter's argument, which a blank page doesn't.

Won't a plain cover letter be boring?

A letter is boring or interesting because of its sentences, not its header color. Hiring managers read hundreds of letters; what registers is a specific opening, a quantified result, and a company-specific reason — delivered fast. A plain design actually concentrates attention on exactly those things. If your letter reads dull in a simple template, the fix is a better first paragraph, not a bolder banner.