Cover Letter Header & Letterhead: Format and Examples

A cover letter header has three blocks, in this order: your name and contact details, the date, then the employer’s name, title, company and address. A letterhead is the designed version of your part of it, with your name set larger and your contact details on one line, usually matching your resume. Everything else in this guide is detail on how to lay those blocks out for print, PDF and email.

TL;DR: Put your name, phone, professional email, city and LinkedIn URL at the top, add the date, then the hiring manager’s name, title, company and address, all left-aligned. Style your name and contact line exactly like your resume header. In an email application, drop the date and address block and put your contact details in the signature instead.

What you’ll take away:

• The 3 blocks of a cover letter header and the order they go in
• Copyable header and letterhead layouts for traditional, modern and email applications
• How much address to include today, and where the date goes
• How to keep your letterhead consistent with your resume
• The formatting mistakes that make a header look careless

What goes in a cover letter header?

The header follows business-letter conventions. Harvard’s Mignone Center for Career Success lists the date, then the contact’s name, title, company and address, and notes that the complete title and address belong in the letter when you send it as an attachment. Purdue OWL’s guide to business letters describes the same order and keeps the recipient’s (inside) address left-justified in every format.

Block	What to include	Notes
1. Your details	Full name, phone, professional email, city and state, LinkedIn or portfolio URL	This is the part a letterhead styles
2. Date	Written out: October 19, 2026	One blank line above and below
3. Employer’s details	Contact name, job title, company, street address, city, state, ZIP	Use a named person whenever you can find one

After the header come the salutation, the body and the closing. If you are unsure how to open the letter, our guide to letter salutations covers the options, and the cover letter address format guide goes deeper on the employer block.

What is a cover letter letterhead?

A letterhead turns block 1 into a design element. Instead of stacking your details on five lines, you set your name in a larger size and put your contact details on one or two lines beneath it, sometimes with a thin rule underneath. The date and the employer’s block stay in plain text below.

The point is recognition. When your cover letter and resume share the same letterhead, a recruiter who switches between the two files sees one consistent application.

Cover letter header examples you can copy

Traditional header (finance, law, government, healthcare)

Jordan Miller
(555) 214-0198 | jordan.miller@email.com
Columbus, OH | linkedin.com/in/jordanmiller

October 19, 2026

Ms. Priya Shah
Senior Recruiter
Northfield Capital
200 Market Street, Suite 400
Columbus, OH 43215

Dear Ms. Shah:

Modern letterhead (tech, marketing, startups)

JORDAN MILLER
Product Designer
jordan.miller@email.com · (555) 214-0198 · Columbus, OH · jordanmiller.design
____________________________________________________________

October 19, 2026

Alex Rivera
Head of Design
Brightline Labs
Columbus, OH

A shorter employer block like this one is common when you apply through an online portal and don’t have a mailing address.

Email cover letter (no header)

Subject: Product Designer application, Jordan Miller

Dear Mr. Rivera,
[body]

Best regards,
Jordan Miller
(555) 214-0198 | jordan.miller@email.com
linkedin.com/in/jordanmiller

The email client stamps the date, so you leave it out. The formal letter format guide shows the full block and modified-block layouts if you are sending a printed letter.

How should you format the header?

• Alignment: left-align everything in block format. Purdue OWL notes that the date may also sit at the center point in modified-block letters; either works if you stay consistent.
• Font: the same font as your resume and the letter body, at 10.5 to 12 point. Your name can be larger.
• Address: city and state is enough for most applications. Give the full street address only if the employer asks, or for a mailed letter.
• Links: make your email, LinkedIn and portfolio clickable in the PDF.
• File: send a PDF unless the posting asks for another format, so the layout survives on the recruiter’s screen.
• Color: one accent color at most, the same one as on your resume.

Where does the letterhead go when you upload to an ATS?

Online application systems read the text of your file, and parsers differ in how they handle the page header and footer areas in Word. Keeping your name and contact line in the main body of the page, as plain text, is the safer choice. A designed letterhead made of text, a font size and a thin line is fine; a letterhead that is an image or sits in a text box may not be read at all. Our article on images in cover letters covers the image question in more detail.

ResuFit builds the header for you. It drafts a cover letter tailored to the job posting, fills your name and details from your profile, and uses the same template design as your resume, so the letterhead matches on both documents. Generating and previewing are free; the full PDF download needs Pro or a per-resume purchase. Try the cover letter generator.

Common cover letter header mistakes

1. Different headers on the resume and the cover letter. Mismatched fonts or contact details make two documents look like two applications.
2. An unprofessional email address. Use a firstname.lastname style address.
3. A wrong or outdated phone number. Check every digit before you send.
4. Obsolete details. Fax numbers and full birth dates have no place in a header.
5. No named recipient. “Hiring Manager” works, but a real name is better; see our guide on when “To Whom It May Concern” still works.
6. Overdesign. Icons, photos and several colors compete with the content. Keep the letterhead as quiet as the resume.

Final checklist

Your cover letter header is three blocks in a fixed order: your details, the date, the employer’s details. Style your part as a letterhead that matches your resume, keep it as text, and drop the date and address in email. Then spend your time on the letter itself: AI prompts for writing a cover letter and our simple cover letter sample help with the body.

When you’re ready, ResuFit writes a cover letter for the specific job and puts it under the same letterhead as your resume.