Resumes and cover letters

Start from Markdown

The resume and cover letter starters keep content in ordinary Markdown. Copy one into a project, edit its YAML and prose, and render it:

liteformats::use_resume("resume.Rmd")
liteformats::resume("resume.Rmd", "resume.html")
liteformats::resume("resume.Rmd", "resume.pdf")

For a cover letter, use the cover letter starter and its matching renderer:

liteformats::use_cover_letter("cover-letter.Rmd")
liteformats::cover_letter("cover-letter.Rmd", "cover-letter.html")
liteformats::cover_letter("cover-letter.Rmd", "cover-letter.pdf")

The PDF path uses xfun::browser_print() and therefore needs a local Chromium-based browser. The HTML renderer does not.

Automate builds with Make

Calling the renderer is more explicit than clicking a Knit button, which makes it straightforward to add project-specific options and other build steps. A small Makefile turns those commands into a repeatable, one-command workflow:

.PHONY: all clean

all: resume.html resume.pdf cover-letter.html cover-letter.pdf

resume.html resume.pdf: resume.Rmd
    Rscript -e 'liteformats::resume("$<", "$@")'

cover-letter.html cover-letter.pdf: cover-letter.Rmd
    Rscript -e 'liteformats::cover_letter("$<", "$@")'

clean:
    $(RM) resume.html resume.pdf cover-letter.html cover-letter.pdf

Run make to build everything, or name one target such as make cover-letter.pdf. Make rebuilds a target only when its .Rmd source has changed. The recipes can also include preprocessing, postprocessing, or any other commands needed for a specific design.

Typography and fitting

The main controls can be set under the liteformats YAML key:

liteformats:
  margins: ["0.65in", "0.8in"]
  font-family: "Charter, Georgia, serif"
  font-size: 11pt
  font-scale: 0.94
  ligatures: false
  line-height: 1.15
  paragraph-spacing: 0.05em
  section-spacing: 1em
  link-color: "#385898"

This flat, kebab-case liteformats mapping is the canonical YAML configuration. Metadata such as author, job-title, address, date, and greeting remains at the top level of the header.

For function-call configuration, use the options helper matching the renderer. Its non-NULL values override YAML. A local font family can provide regular, italic, bold, and bold-italic files. These files are embedded into the output, which keeps HTML portable and lets PDF rendering work offline.

liteformats::resume(
  "resume.Rmd",
  options = liteformats::resume_options(
    font_files = c(
      regular = "fonts/MySerif-Regular.otf",
      italic = "fonts/MySerif-Italic.otf",
      bold = "fonts/MySerif-Bold.otf"
    ),
    font_scale = 0.9,
    ligatures = FALSE
  )
)

Alternatively, google_font = "Source Serif 4" in the helper (or google-font: "Source Serif 4" in YAML) adds a Google Fonts stylesheet. liteformats consults its bundled catalog and requests the available weights and styles needed for regular, bold, italic, and bold-italic text. It uses a variable weight range when the family provides one and omits unsupported combinations, so the CSS API request remains valid. This option is deliberately opt-in because it requires internet access when the document is rendered.

A full Google Fonts CSS v2 URL overrides the catalog-derived request and can select explicit weights or variable axes:

liteformats::resume(
  "resume.Rmd",
  options = liteformats::resume_options(
    google_font = paste0(
      "https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?",
      "family=Inter:ital,opsz,wght@0,14..32,100..900;",
      "1,14..32,100..900&display=swap"
    )
  )
)

The full-URL form also supports families newer than the bundled catalog.

Disabling ligatures prevents a common text-extraction problem, but an embedded font’s own tables can also affect PDF extraction. For ATS-sensitive documents, check the final result with a tool such as pdftotext resume.pdf -.

Semantic resume entries

The starter uses fenced divisions and inline spans to align dates and locations without LaTeX:

::: resume-entry
**Example Corporation** [Seattle, WA · 2022--Present](){.resume-meta}

**Principal Data Scientist** [Evidence Systems](){.resume-meta}

- Led a cross-functional analytical program.
- Built reusable, documented research software.
:::

The cover letter starter needs no layout markup. Its author, address, contact details, date, and greeting come from YAML, while the letter itself remains plain Markdown. The template keeps the letterhead and body in two columns, including in narrow browser or IDE preview panes. Use a YAML list for a multiline address, for example address: ["123 Example Street", "Example City, EX 00000"]; litedown’s intentionally small YAML parser does not implement block scalars.