What is legibility?
Legibility is about how easily a person can recognize, identify, and read characters in a block of text. Legibility should not be confused with readability. Legibility is the structure and visual clarity of text in a document, whilst readability is a measure of how difficult the document's content is to read.
Why is legibility important?
Making a resume easily legible by arranging your resume in easy to follow structure will improve navigation that is easy to follow for both human readers and ATS bots is fundamental.
Firstly it is essential to include essential section headings in your resume. Clearly identified section headings improve resume structure, making it easy to follow by an ATS, a recruiter, or manager to quickly and accurately find information that matches a job position.
Identifying section headings clearly in the same font size as the rest of the content or slightly larger font size in bold using font types such as Times New Roman, Helvetica or Arial is the best way.
For the rest of the content, a regular 10pt to 12pt font size is good and easily readable. Maintaining the same typefaces or font types as the headings makes the content of the document consistent. Using the right amount of white spaces is also important as it improves clarity between words in the text.
Contrast also plays a significant part in legibility, and black lettering on a white background is the best option.
Line length is another factor that needs to be considered when writing a resume. Research studies found that line lengths had a significant effect on reading speed. The research revealed that readers read the fastest on articles with 95 characters per line (CPL). The way to optimize for reading speed is to keep your average line lengths around 95 CPL which can be achieved by adjusting the margins and using the larger font sizes of 11pt or 12pt.
Well-structured content with simple and clear formatting will make your resume straightforward and easily legible.