The one job a cover letter has
A cover letter exists to tell the one story your resume cannot: why this job, from you, now. The resume is a structured record of what you have done; the letter is your only chance to connect it to what the employer is trying to do. Every failing letter fails the same way — it restates the resume in paragraph form and adds adjectives.
That is why this checker weighs personalization and language as heavily as structure. A letter can be perfectly shaped and still be the letter every other applicant sent. The checks are calibrated to catch the generic version: the missing addressee, the cliché count, the absence of a single number, the opening that never names the role. Fix those and what remains is, almost by definition, specific to you.
The thirteen checks, by category
The score is deterministic: same letter, same result, with every point accounted for. This list renders from the same definitions the engine runs, so it always matches the tool above.
Length & shape (25 points)
- Word count — 200 to 400 words; long enough to say something, short enough to be read
- Paragraph count — 3 to 5 paragraphs a skimmer can navigate
- Sentence length — average under 24 words, so no sentence needs rereading
Structure (25 points)
- Greeting — the letter opens by addressing someone
- Sign-off — a closing ("Sincerely," "Best regards") followed by your name
- The role, named early — the first paragraph says what you are applying for
- A closing ask — the last paragraph requests the interview or conversation
Personalization (25 points)
- A named addressee — a person or at least "Hiring Manager," never "To Whom It May Concern"
- No leftover placeholders — "[Company]," "[Name]," or template brackets that survived editing
- Concrete evidence — at least one number or measurable result from your actual work
Language (25 points)
- Cliché count — "team player," "think outside the box," "hit the ground running," and friends
- "I" variety — the share of sentences that open with "I" stays under half
- Hedges — "I feel," "I believe," "in my opinion" soften claims the letter should commit to
A letter that scores 100, annotated
This sample was scored by the checker itself when this page was built — paste it above and you will get the identical result: 100/100, with subtotals of 25/25 length & shape, 25/25 structure, 25/25 personalization, 25/25 language. It passes clean on purpose: it shows the target. To see what a flagged check looks like, paste it, then delete the addressee's name or swap a number for an adjective and run it again.
Dear Ms. Alvarez, I'm applying for the Marketing Coordinator opening on your growth team. For the past two years I've run email and social campaigns for a 40-store regional grocery chain, and the part of the posting that caught my attention — owning the campaign calendar end to end — is the part of my current job I'd most like to make my whole job. Last year I rebuilt our email program around two customer segments instead of one blast list. Open rates rose from 19% to 31% in four months, and the segmented coupon sends drove a measurable 8% lift in repeat visits. I also coordinated our first influencer partnership, a 12-post series that came in under its $6,000 budget and outperformed our paid social benchmark by half. Both projects meant working weekly with store managers, our designer, and a legal reviewer, which taught me how to keep a campaign moving without owning everyone in it. Your team's work on the loyalty relaunch is the reason I applied here specifically: turning transactional customers into repeat ones is exactly the problem I've spent two years on, at smaller scale. I'd welcome the chance to talk about the coordinator role. Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely, Jordan Avery
What earns the points: the first paragraph names the role in its first sentence and pivots straight to the writer's matching experience. The middle paragraph carries three verifiable numbers (19% to 31%, 8% lift, under a $6,000 budget) — exactly the evidence the concrete-evidence check looks for. The third paragraph answers "why this company" with a specific project, not flattery. And the close asks for the conversation in one plain sentence. What the rubric can't judge is whether the story is true and whether it is the writer's strongest one — no deterministic check can. That content layer is what the AI feedback button above exists for.
Fixing the three most-flagged problems
Clichés. "Team player," "fast learner," and "proven track record" are claims every applicant makes, which means they carry zero information. The fix is mechanical: for each one, name the incident that made you write it. "Fast learner" becomes "picked up our ticketing system well enough to train the next hire within a month." If no incident exists, the claim goes.
Every sentence starting with "I." It reads as a list of assertions rather than a story. Restructure a few sentences to lead with the work, the team, or the company: "Your posting asks for someone who has run a campaign calendar end to end — that has been my whole job for two years." Same content, different subject.
No evidence. A letter with no numbers is a letter of opinions. You need exactly one or two: the result you are proudest of, stated the way you would defend it in the interview. Pull it from your resume's best bullet — the letter's job is to expand that bullet into the story behind it. If you are changing fields and your evidence lives in an old career, the career change resume example shows how to translate it rather than apologize for it.
One workflow note: tailor the letter after extracting the posting's keywords with the job description keyword extractor. The letter should speak the posting's language naturally — the top three to five terms, woven into your story — while the resume carries the full keyword coverage.