A friend of mine got a call at 11pm once — her uncle had passed, and the funeral home needed the obituary by 9am the next morning for the paper’s deadline. She’d never written one in her life. She sat at her kitchen table with a legal pad, a cup of coffee going cold, and no idea where to start. Sound familiar?
If you’re reading this, chances are you’re either staring down that same blank page, or you work in the funeral and memorial space and you’re trying to help families through it. Either way, obituary writing isn’t something most of us practice. You don’t take a class on it. You just… end up doing it, usually on one of the worst days of your life, under a deadline, while everyone around you is also grieving and also has opinions about what should go in.
So let’s slow down and actually talk through this — what belongs in an obituary, what doesn’t, how to strike the right tone, and the mistakes that are easy to make when you’re exhausted and heartbroken.
What Even Is an Obituary For?
Here’s the thing people forget: an obituary isn’t a resume, and it isn’t a eulogy either. It’s somewhere in between. A resume lists achievements. A eulogy is spoken, personal, and often a little raw — meant for the people already in the room who knew the person. An obituary has to do double duty. It informs people who might not have heard yet (extended family, old coworkers, that neighbor from three houses down in 1998), and it also serves as a kind of permanent, public record — the thing that shows up when someone searches a name years later.
That dual purpose is why obituaries have a particular shape to them. They’re not stiff because writers lack imagination. They’re structured that way because they need to convey facts clearly to strangers while still sounding like they were written by someone who loved the person.
The Basic Structure (And Why It Works)
Most obituaries, whether they’re three paragraphs or three pages, follow a loose order. It’s not a rigid formula, but it’s become standard for good reason — it gets the essential information across first, then makes room for the personal stuff.
1. The Opening Line
Full name, age, city of residence, and the date of passing. Sometimes people add “passed away peacefully” or “died suddenly” here, sometimes they skip straight to the facts. Either is fine. What I’d say, gently, is: don’t feel pressured to explain a cause of death if the family doesn’t want to. “After a long illness” or “following a courageous battle” covers a lot of ground without forcing anyone to share details they’re not ready to share. And if the family does want specifics — some do, especially around causes they want to raise awareness for — that’s their call to make, not a default.
2. Birth Details and Family of Origin
Where and when they were born, parents’ names (this matters more than people realize — genealogists and family historians rely on obituaries constantly, sometimes decades later).
3. Life Story
This is where the obituary actually becomes about the person. Education, career, military service, where they lived and why they moved there, hobbies, faith community, volunteer work. You don’t need to cram in every job they ever held. Pick the parts that actually shaped who they were.
4. Survived By / Preceded By
The family list. This one trips people up more than any other section — more on that in a second.
5. Service Details
Visitation times, funeral or memorial service location, burial info if it’s public. Some families keep this private and just note “a private service will be held.”
6. Memorial Requests
“In lieu of flowers” donations, if the family has a cause they’d rather people support.
Tone: The Part Nobody Teaches You
Honestly? Tone is where most first-time obituary writers get stuck, not facts. You know the facts — you lived them. But how do you sound? Warm without being saccharine. Honest without oversharing. Respectful without sounding like a form letter.
A few things I’ve noticed help:
Write like you’re talking to someone who knew them a little, but not well. Not a stranger, not their best friend. That middle-distance voice is what makes an obituary land right.
Use specific details, not generic praise. “She loved to cook” is fine, but “she made the same pot roast every Sunday for forty years and would not, under any circumstances, share the recipe” — that’s a person. That’s someone you can picture. Generic phrases like “she touched many lives” or “he will be deeply missed” aren’t wrong, exactly, they’re just… everywhere. If you can swap one detail from your person into a sentence and make it un-generic, do that.
It’s okay to include a little humor, if it fits the person. If Grandpa was famously stubborn about never using a GPS and getting lost anyway, and everyone laughs about it — you can put that in. Obituaries that are only solemn can end up feeling less true to the actual person than ones that let a little personality through.
Don’t force positivity if it isn’t earned. Not every relationship was simple. You don’t have to write anything untrue. If things were complicated, you can write something plain and dignified without inventing warmth that wasn’t there.
Also Explore Our Guide On This: Denika Kisty
What to Include (The Checklist Version)
- Full legal name and any nickname they went by
- Age at time of passing
- Date and place of death
- Date and place of birth
- Parents’ names
- Education and career highlights
- Military service, if applicable
- Hobbies, passions, causes they cared about
- Religious or community affiliations
- Names of surviving family members (spouse, children, siblings, grandchildren — and it’s kind and increasingly common to include close friends who functioned as family)
- Names of family members who predeceased them
- Service and visitation information
- Memorial donation instructions, if any
What to Leave Out
This is where etiquette really matters, and where a lot of families need gentle guidance.
Skip the cause of death unless the family wants it shared. This one’s not negotiable, in my opinion. It’s private medical information about a person who can no longer consent to sharing it. Some families are open about it — sometimes deliberately, to raise awareness about addiction, suicide, cancer, whatever it was. That’s their choice, and it can do real good. But it should never be assumed or added by a writer without the family explicitly asking for it.
Don’t list every single relative. I know it feels disrespectful to leave anyone out, but an obituary that lists forty-three cousins by name becomes hard to read and, honestly, hard to feel anything from. Immediate family, close family, maybe a line acknowledging “and many nieces, nephews, and cousins” covers it without turning the piece into a phone book.
Avoid financial or legal details. Estate matters, inheritance, anything litigious — none of that belongs here, ever.
Be careful with humor that could read as disrespectful to some readers. A little personality is good. But remember an obituary reaches people well outside the family’s inner circle, so read it back and ask if a distant cousin or old coworker would find it warm, or find it odd.
Don’t editorialize about family conflict. If there was estrangement, a divorce, a falling-out — the obituary isn’t the place to explain or justify it. Just write who they’re survived by, plainly, and let the rest stay private.
A Few Real Dos and Don’ts
Do ask other family members to read a draft before it’s published. Little factual errors — wrong birth year, misspelled town, forgotten grandchild — happen constantly under grief and stress, and they’re painful to fix after the fact.
Do keep a copy for the family archive, separate from the newspaper or funeral home posting. People search for these years later.
Don’t wait until the last minute if you can help it. I know that’s easier said than done — a lot of obituaries do get written the night before, on no sleep. But if there’s any time to draft it slowly, even a rough outline, it makes the final version so much steadier.
Don’t feel obligated to follow a template word for word. Funeral homes often provide a fill-in-the-blank format, and that’s a fine starting point, but you’re allowed to deviate from it. The best obituaries usually break from formula somewhere.
Length: How Long Should It Be?
There’s no rule, really, though newspapers used to charge by the line and that shaped a lot of obituary writing into something clipped and short. Online, that constraint is mostly gone. A few hundred words is standard. Some families write a page. Some write three sentences. What matters more than length is whether it feels complete — did it capture something true about who this person was, or does it read like it was rushed through just to check a box?
FAQs
Do I have to mention how someone died?
No. It’s entirely up to the family. Vague phrasing like “after a brief illness” or “unexpectedly” is completely standard and accepted.
Can I write an obituary myself, or does the funeral home do it?
Either. Most funeral homes will help draft one or offer a template, but plenty of families write it themselves, sometimes with a family member who’s a good writer taking the lead. You can also hire a professional obituary writer if the family would rather not do it alone.
Is it okay to include pets in an obituary?
Honestly, yes, and people do it more than you’d think. If someone had a dog they were inseparable from for fifteen years, that’s part of their life story.
What if the family disagrees on what to include?
This happens more often than people admit. Usually the closest family member — spouse, or eldest child — has final say, but it helps to circulate a draft and get input before it’s set in stone.
Can I edit an obituary after it’s published?
Newspapers and funeral home websites can usually correct errors after the fact, so don’t panic if a typo slips through. It happens to almost everyone.
How is an obituary different from a death notice?
A death notice is the short, bare-bones version — name, dates, service info, sometimes free or low-cost to publish. An obituary is the fuller story, usually paid, and gives room for the life details.
Writing an obituary is never really about getting the format right. It’s about giving someone’s life a shape, in words, that other people can hold onto. Take your time with it if you can. And if you can’t — if it has to happen fast, at a kitchen table at midnight — know that a plain, honest paragraph written with care will always land better than a polished one written without it.
