Cover letter

Letters of application had existed for centuries. Leonardo da Vinci wrote one to the Duke of Milan around 1482, detailing his skills in engineering and military design.1 In the nineteenth century, business correspondence manuals described such letters as "application letters," handwritten documents that served as introductions to prospective employers.

The 1883 reference manual The Universal Self-Instructor included sample application letters for apprenticeships, written in a formal style that would be recognizable today.2

The specific term "cover letter" in the context of employment first appeared on September 23, 1956, in a classified advertisement in the New York Times.3 The ad, for an industrial paint chemist at Dutch Boy Paints, requested that applicants "submit resume with cover letter." Within a decade, services had appeared to help job seekers write them.

The term borrowed from an older usage. In the 1930s and 1940s, a "cover letter" accompanied business, economic, or political documents, providing context or explanation for the denser material underneath.4

The rise of the cover letter coincided with the growth of the white-collar service economy. Unionized manufacturing workers had been hired for specific tasks without needing to explain themselves in writing. Service-sector employees, expected to interact with clients and represent organizations, needed a document that could qualify the person behind the accomplishments.5

By the 1980s, the combination of a typed resume and a personalized cover letter had become the standard format for job applications in the United States. Microsoft Word templates made the format accessible to anyone with a personal computer. The cover letter remained a fixture of hiring for decades, even as some employers acknowledged they no longer read them.6