An obituary does two jobs at once, and they pull against each other. It is a public notice — names, dates, service times, the facts people need to show up. It is also the only thing many people will ever read about a person's entire life. Getting both into three hundred words is genuinely hard, and nobody has practised.
The good news is that obituaries follow a structure. Once you can see it, the writing gets much easier, because you stop staring at a blank page and start answering six questions in order.
Before you write: gather these six things
Almost every stall happens because a fact is missing, not because the words are hard. Collect these first and the draft takes half the time:
- Full legal name, plus a nickname or maiden name if it is how people knew them.
- Dates and places of birth and death, and the city they lived in most recently.
- Immediate family — who survives them, and who died before them.
- The shape of their working life — where they worked, for how long, what they were known for.
- Two or three specifics that were unmistakably theirs. Not "loved gardening" — the tomatoes she refused to stake, the truck he would not sell.
- Service details — date, time, venue, address, and whether it is open to all.
If you are missing something and cannot reach the person who knows, write the sentence without it. An obituary with a gap reads as an obituary. An obituary that waits three days for a middle name misses the paper.
The structure, paragraph by paragraph
1. The announcement
Full name, age, city, and the date they died. Some families include a cause; most do not, and there is no obligation whatsoever. "Died peacefully at home" and "died after a long illness" are both complete sentences that tell people what they need without inviting questions.
If the death was sudden, or by suicide, you are under no obligation to say so here or anywhere. Many families write only that the death was sudden, and that is a complete and dignified sentence. What goes in an obituary is public and permanent; what you tell people privately is yours to decide, later, when you have had time.
If you are struggling right now, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is free, confidential and open 24 hours a day. Call 988 · Text 988 · Chat online
2. The life
Where they were born, who raised them, where they went to school, what they did for work. Two to four sentences. This is the paragraph people skim, so keep it moving — it exists to locate the person in time and place, not to be exhaustive.
3. Who they actually were
This is the paragraph anyone will remember, and the one most drafts skip past. Give it the most room. Specifics do all the work here:
She kept a kitchen that smelled permanently of garlic and butter, and she would not let you leave without a container of something.
That sentence tells you more than a paragraph of adjectives. If you find yourself writing "she loved her family" or "he never met a stranger," push one level down and ask what that looked like on an ordinary Tuesday.
4. Survivors and those who went before
Convention runs closest family outward: spouse, then children and their spouses, then grandchildren, then siblings. Those who died first are listed separately, usually last, and usually introduced with "preceded in death by."
Two things families get wrong here, and both cause real hurt: leaving out a stepchild or an in-law who considered themselves family, and getting the order of names wrong between siblings. Read this paragraph aloud to one other family member before it goes anywhere.
5. Service details
Date, time, full venue name, street address, city. If there is a reception afterward, say where. If the family has asked for donations somewhere instead of flowers, this is where that goes.
6. The closing line
One sentence. A thank-you to the people who cared for them, an invitation, or something that sounds like the person. It is the last thing anyone reads, and it is worth ten minutes.
How long should an obituary be?
It depends entirely on where it is going, and this is the single most common cause of a rewrite:
- Newspaper death notice — 50 to 100 words. Facts only, usually charged by the line.
- Standard newspaper obituary — 200 to 400 words. The full structure above, tightly written.
- Funeral program — 250 to 500 words, depending on the format and how many photographs share the page.
- Online memorial page — as long as you like. There is no column inch to buy.
Write the long version first and cut down. Cutting is far easier than padding, and the long version is the one worth keeping for the family regardless of what the paper prints.
On newspaper cost: paid obituaries are usually billed per line or per column inch, and a standard-length notice with a photograph runs into the hundreds of dollars at many metro papers. If cost is a factor, a printed program and an online memorial page reach more people than a paid notice does, for less.
Tone: warm, and true
You are not writing a tribute speech and you are not writing a résumé. The register that works is plain and specific — the way you would describe them to someone who never met them, if you only had a minute and wanted them to understand.
A few things worth avoiding, because they make every obituary sound like every other one: "passed away peacefully surrounded by loved ones" unless it is true, "will be deeply missed by all who knew him," and any sentence that could be moved to a different person's obituary without changing a word.
Complicated relationships are allowed to stay complicated. You do not have to resolve a family in three hundred words, and readers who knew the person will notice if you try.
Before it goes anywhere: the check
- Every name spelled the way that person spells it, including middle initials and Jr./Sr.
- Dates checked against a document, not memory.
- Survivor list read aloud to someone else in the family.
- Service address checked on a map — venue names repeat across towns.
- Read the whole thing out loud once. You will hear the wrong sentence before you see it.
You do not have to start from a blank page
Answer a handful of questions about them and we will shape it into a finished obituary and a print-ready program — in the structure above, in about fifteen minutes.
Start their tribute