These three get used interchangeably, and it causes real problems — families pay newspaper rates for something they did not need, or turn up at a service with nothing written because they assumed someone else was handling it.
Death notice
What: A short factual announcement. Name, age, town, date of death, service details. Usually 50 to 100 words.
Who writes it: Often the funeral home, as part of their service.
Where it goes: The newspaper's paid notices section, and increasingly the funeral home's own website.
Cost: Paid, usually by the line. This is the one people are surprised by.
Obituary
What: The fuller account — who they were, what they did, who survives them, and the service details. Typically 200 to 400 words in print, longer online.
Who writes it: The family, almost always. A funeral director may tidy it.
Where it goes: The newspaper, the funeral home site, an online memorial page, and the printed program.
Cost: Free to write. Paid only if a newspaper prints it.
Eulogy
What: A speech, delivered at the service. Spoken, not printed.
Who writes it: Whoever is giving it — a child, a sibling, a close friend, sometimes the officiant.
Where it goes: Nowhere. It is read aloud once.
Cost: None.
The expensive confusion: a family writes a beautiful 600-word obituary and sends it to the paper assuming that is what a notice is. Newspapers bill by the line. The same information as a 60-word death notice, with the full obituary on a memorial page and in the program, costs a fraction and reaches more people.
Which do you actually need?
- A death notice if you want it in the local paper and cost matters. Facts and service times only.
- An obituary in every case. It goes in the program, on the memorial page, and is what family keeps. Write this one properly.
- A eulogy only if someone is speaking. It is a different piece of writing — the obituary is read; the eulogy is heard, and can be far more personal.
A common and sensible arrangement: a short paid death notice in the paper, the full obituary printed in the program and published free on a memorial page, and a eulogy written separately by whoever is speaking.
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