How to Write an Obituary: A Step-by-Step Guide

An obituary tells people that someone has died and tells them who that person was. Most are written in one evening by a son, a daughter or a grandchild who has never written one before. You do not need to be a writer. You need the facts in the right order and two or three details that only your family knows.

Step 1: Gather the facts

Before you write a sentence, write these down. Getting them right matters more than any line of prose.

• Full name, including a middle name, a maiden name and a nickname if they went by one.
• Age, date of birth and date of death. Work out the age from the dates; it is the most common mistake.
• Where they were born and where they lived.
• Spouse, and the wedding date if you want to say how long they were married.
• Children and their spouses, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, brothers and sisters.
• Close family who died before them.
• The service: date, time, place, the burial, and where memorial gifts can go.

Step 2: Find the details

Facts make an obituary correct. Details make it theirs. Ask yourself, or ask the family around the kitchen table:

1. Where did they grow up, and what was home like?
2. What did they do with their days? Work, home, church, service.
3. Who and what did they love most?
4. What did they always say?
5. What is one small habit everyone will remember?
6. What would they want people to do now?

Write down the answers in the words people use. “She knew every kid’s name and which ones needed an extra roll” says more than “she was devoted to the children she served.” Keep those phrases. They are the lines people will read twice.

Step 3: Write it in this order

1. The announcement. One sentence: name, age, home town, date of death. “Dorothy Mae Hensley, 85, of Bowling Green, died on November 8, 2026.”
2. Where it began. Birth, parents if you like, and one line about growing up.
3. The life. Two or three short paragraphs: work, marriage, faith, what they loved, the habit everyone remembers. Follow time if that is easiest.
4. The family. “She is survived by her children, Daniel Hensley (Karen) and Ruth Ellis (Tom); her grandchildren…” Then “She was preceded in death by…”. The spouse’s name in brackets after a child is the usual form.
5. The service. Date, time and place. Add the burial and the repast, and memorial gifts if the family wants them.

For a funeral program, 250 to 400 words fills one page. For a newspaper, where you often pay by the line, a shorter version is common, with the full one on the funeral home website.

Step 4: Check it

Read it aloud once. Then check the things people notice:

• The spelling of every name, especially in-laws and grandchildren.
• The age, worked out again from the dates.
• That no one was left out of the survivors. Ask one other family member to read that paragraph.
• The service date, time and address.

What to leave out

A home address (empty houses are a target during funerals), the full birth date if you worry about identity theft, and anything a family member asked to keep private. The cause of death is optional. Many families write “after a long illness” or say nothing.

Let us write the first draft

The free obituary writer asks the six questions above and writes the obituary in your words. It keeps your phrases, checks every statement against your answers and works out the age from the dates. You edit it from there. If you are making the program too, the funeral program template uses the same answers for the obituary, the eulogy and the cards. You can also read obituary examples for ideas.