academiccv.cls: A clean, simple academic CV

LaTeX has a number of class/style files for typesetting CVs and resumes. None of them is aesthetically pleasing and suited to an academic CV, which should be somber and clean, yet visually appealing, and suited for quick skimming. In addition, the available packages all require rather exotic source code syntax.

For years, I used to roll my own hacked-together style file, which did not make for the most pretty source code, but gave a nice result. Things might have continued this way, had I not heard that friends of mine use MS Word for their CVs (and live with the consequences), simply because the only way they could get lists with year numbers as labels (required for US-style academic CVs) was by using cumbersome tabular environments.

Friends don't let friends use MS Word, so here is my academic CV template. It does not do much: It is pretty much the standard article class, enhanced with some niceties: a dated environment that allows for lists itemized by date, plus some convenience commands for creating a nice header, and some adjustments for sectioning commands.

For an example of a pretty-ish CV produced using this package, see example.pdf, which is actually my current CV. The source for this is in the example directory.

Installation

As usual, simply place academiccv.cls some place where TeX can find it (the directory where your tex files live will work if all else fails).

Then you can load in the usual way, by starting the preamble of your document with:

\documentclass{academiccv}

All package options (except for enumitemize) will behave as with the standard article class, except for the font size options (academiccv.cls will always behave as if 12pt is passed).

Dependencies

• enumitem.sty (provides the list environments)
• titlesec.sty (for adjusting section titles)
• geometry.sty (for adjusting margins)

All three of these should be provided with virtually all recent-ish LaTeX-installations.

Usage

The dated evironment

academiccv.cls is a conservative extension of LaTeX's article class. The main enhancement it offers is the dated evironment, which typesets list entries associated with dates, like this:

\begin{dated} 
    \item[2007--2013] 
        \textbf{Ph.D. in Linguistics}, Stanford University, 2013.\\
        Dissertation: \href{http://sven-lauer.net/output/Lauer-Dissertation-DynamicPragmatics.pdf}{\textbf{Towards a dynamic pragmatics}}\\
        Committee: Cleo Condoravdi, Christopher Potts (co-chairs), Paul Kiparsky.
    \item[2005--2007]
        Universiteit van Amsterdam\\
        Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC)\\
        M.Sc. student in Logic
    \item[2001--2005] 
        \textbf{B.Sc. in Cognitive Science} with distinction, {Universit\"at Osnabr\"uck}, 2005. 
    \item[2003-2004]
        University of Edinburgh\\
        School of Informatics\\
        Visiting undergraduate 
\end{dated}

This will be typeset as:

Front matter

academiccv.cls redefines \maketitle to produce a header suitable for CVs. Standardly, it will typeset the name provided via \author, followed by the \date, followed by a horizontal line. You can override the \maketitle command to change this, or simply leave it out and roll your own header.

Besides the usual \date and \author settings, academiccv provides the commands \contact and \moreinfo. Their contents are typeset (next to each other, flush left and right, respectively) with the \makeinfo command.

Setting lists without dates (the undated environment)

For some sections of a CV, dating items may no make sense (lists of references, languages spoken, skills, etc.). You can use the standard LaTeX list environments (like itemize and enumerate) for those, but this may not always give the desired result.

If you want the list items to indented in the same way as the dated ones are, you can just use a dated list, but leave out the argument of \item. If you instead want the list items to be flush with the headings, you can instead use the undated environment, like so:

%-----------------------------------------------------------------------------%
\section*{References}
%-----------------------------------------------------------------------------%
\begin{undated}
    \item
        \textbf{Cleo Condoravdi}\\
        \textit{Professor}\\
        Department of Linguistics\\
        Margaret Jacks Hall, Building 460\\
        Stanford University \\
        Stanford, CA 94305-2150\\
        USA\\
        \href{mailto:[email protected]}{\texttt{[email protected]}}
    \item 
        \textbf{Christopher Potts}\\
        \textit{Professor}\\
        Department of Linguistics\\
        Margaret Jacks Hall, Building 460\\
        Stanford University \\
        Stanford, CA 94305-2150\\
        USA\\
        \href{mailto:[email protected]}{\texttt{[email protected]}}
\end{undated}

which will be typeset as:

Customization

academiccv.cls tries to stay out of your way as much as possible: It only enhances the article class with the dated and undated environments, and adjusts the display of (sub)section headings.

Package options

There is one package option that is particular to academiccv.cls, called enumitemize. By default, academiccv loads the enumitem package with the loadonly option, which means the enhancements are not applied to the standard LaTeX list environments (itemize, enumerate and description). With enumitemize, the standard lists get the enhancements, as well.

All other options are passed through to article unchanged. However, the font size options will have no effect (academiccv will always behave as if the 12pt option had been passed). If you really want to change the basic font size, you will have to do it by other means.

(I do advise against font sizes smaller than 12pt for CVs, which are made to be skimmed. This becomes difficult on smaller font sizes. This is why I hardwired 12pt as the font size (I would have preferred to have 12pt as a default that can be overriden, but this does not seem to be possible). For the same reason, I advise strongly against smaller margins than the 1 inch default).

(Sub)section titles

academiccv uses the titlesec package to adjust the display of section titles. This means that the facilities of that package are available for changing these.

For example, if you wanted to have \subsubsections be displayed in italics, you could simply add the following to your preamble:

\titleformat{\subsubsection}{\normalsize\mdseries\it}{\thesubsubsection.}{.5em}{}

Note: academiccv does not suppress section numbers by default, even though it is not customary to number the sections in a CV. So you should generally use the \section*, \subsection* and \subsubsection* commands to label your sections.

List parameters

The dated and undated lists are provided by enumitem, which makes them highly configurable.

If you want to adjust the parameters of a single list (say, to increase spacing between the items), you can simply pass the parameters as an optional argument to the list, like so:

\begin{dated}[itemsep=1em]
   ...
\end{dated}

If you instead want to change all lists in a document, you can use the \setlist command. However, this overrides all parameters of the lists. In order to change only selected settings, you can use the following:

\setlist[dated]{dateddefaults, itemsep=1em}
\setlist[undated]{undateddefaults, itemsep=1em}