A Guide for Resume Writing and Typesetting

A resume gives people a first impression of your career.

On an A4 sheet paper (210 mm * 297 mm), a resume ends the previous stage of your life and begins the next.

A nine-storey tower arises from a pile of earth.

— Laozi (opens in a new tab), Chapter 64

A pretty-print resume is based on details such as font, punctuation, layout and grammar.

This guide systematically explains the essentials of resume writing and typesetting with special emphasis on typography, helping you to make a resume beautiful in form and spirit. For each topic, it first explains WHAT it is, then WHY it is so, and finally HOW to do it.

The guide tries to be as concise and clear as possible, there are four priority levels for the different explanations:

• MUST, mandatory in typesetting, serious mistake if violated
• RECOMMEND, conform to general typesetting standards, highly recommended
• SHOULD NOT, require advanced knowledge or features in typesetting, or diverse in different languages and cultures, or vary with regulations in companies, dangerous to use if not informed
• MUST NOT, conflict with general typesetting standards, forbidden to apply