How to write an obituary
2 min read
An obituary does two jobs at once: it announces a death, and it makes a first attempt at describing a life. Most drafts fail because they try to do the second before the first.
The five things it must contain
- Full name, including the name they were known by. "Margaret Whitfield (Peggy)". Half the people who need to see this know only one of the two.
- Dates. Born, died. Write the month in words — 08/09 is read as two different dates on two sides of the Atlantic, and this is the one notice where that cannot happen.
- Who survives them. Spouse, children, grandchildren, by name. This is the part families argue about; agree it before you publish, because a name left out of a printed notice is remembered for a generation.
- The practical details. Where and when the service is, whether it is open to everyone or family only, and whether there is a gathering afterwards. Put this high — it is the information most readers actually came for.
- What to do instead of flowers, if anything. Naming a charity is standard practice, and it gives people who cannot attend something to do.
Then one line about who they were
Not a paragraph of virtues. One concrete line, and it can carry more than a whole eulogy:
She taught at the same primary school for thirty-one years, and was still being stopped in the street by former pupils at eighty.
He kept bees, badly, and gave away the honey anyway.
If you write nothing else personal, write that.
What it costs
Newspaper notices are usually charged by the line, the word or the column centimeter, and the total surprises most families. A long tribute in a national paper can run into hundreds; a local paper is considerably less. Photographs cost extra.
Two consequences worth planning around. Put the essential information first, in case you need to cut. And consider splitting the job: a short paid notice for the facts, and a longer piece somewhere that costs nothing — a memorial page, a funeral director's website — for the life.
The tone
Obituaries drift into a register nobody uses anywhere else: "passed peacefully surrounded by loving family", "will be sadly missed by all who knew her."
There is nothing wrong with those phrases, and they are what many families want. But if you would rather it sounded like a person, write the way you would speak and then cut a third of it. Plain sentences survive better than formal ones.
Online
If you publish it anywhere permanent, remember that a printed notice disappears within a week and an online one does not. Two practical points:
- Be careful with addresses and dates of birth. An obituary with a home address and a full date of birth is a gift to anyone looking for one, and empty houses during a funeral are a known target.
- Make it somewhere you control. A notice on a platform you do not own can be behind a paywall in five years, or gone. Whatever the family writes about this person is worth keeping somewhere the family keeps.