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

To write an obituary, gather the biographical facts first, then write in this order: the announcement of death, a short biography, the list of survivors, the list of family who died earlier, service details, memorial contribution instructions, and a closing line. Most obituaries take about an hour to draft once the facts are in front of you, and most run 200 to 450 words.

The hardest part is not the writing. It is that you are being asked to summarize a person in three paragraphs, on a deadline, days after they died. What follows breaks that into nine steps small enough to do one at a time.

Step 1: Gather the facts before you write a sentence

Almost every obituary that stalls out stalls because a date is missing. Collect all of this first, in a single document or on a single sheet of paper:

• Full legal name, plus maiden name, nickname, and any name they went by professionally
• Age at death
• Date of death and city where the death occurred
• Date and place of birth
• Parents' full names, including the mother's maiden name if you plan to include it
• Schools attended and graduation years
• Military branch, years of service, rank, and any decorations
• Marriage date, place, and spouse's name, including previous marriages if the family wants them included
• Employers, job titles, and years
• Church, union, lodge, veterans post, volunteer roles, clubs
• Survivors, with correct spellings, current cities, and spouse names in parentheses
• Family members who died earlier
• Service details exactly as the funeral home has them
• The organization for memorial contributions, with a mailing address or web address

Two of these are worth double-checking against a document rather than memory: the date of birth and the spelling of survivors' names. Pull the birth date from a driver's license, passport, or the death certificate worksheet the funeral home is preparing. Ask a second family member to spell every survivor's name back to you.

If you are managing the obituary alongside everything else that comes due this week, our after-death checklist lays the whole sequence out.

Step 2: Find out your real deadline

Ask the funeral home two questions: which publications are we submitting to, and when is their cutoff?

Most newspapers require obituary copy 24 to 48 hours before the print date. Weekend and Monday editions usually have deadlines on Thursday or Friday afternoon. Funeral home websites and online obituary platforms can post the same day. If the obituary carries the service information, the practical deadline is earlier than the paper's: people need enough notice to travel.

Ask the funeral home whether they submit on your behalf, whether obituary placement is included in the package you have already signed, and whether there is a word or line limit on the print version. Knowing the limit before you draft saves you from cutting a piece you loved.

Step 3: Write the announcement sentence

The first sentence carries name, age, city, and date of death. This is the sentence search engines index, the sentence relatives forward, and the sentence that has to be correct.

Standard patterns:

Margaret Ann Delaney, 82, of Erie, Pennsylvania, died on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, at UPMC Hamot.

James Robert "Jim" Halloran, 61, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, died unexpectedly on Saturday, June 6, 2026.

Yolanda Rios Navarro, 74, of El Paso, Texas, died peacefully at home on Friday, February 20, 2026, surrounded by her family.

Choose one verb and keep it for the whole piece. "Died" is plain and increasingly common. "Passed away" is softer and still standard. "Went to be with the Lord" or "entered eternal rest" fits obituaries with a religious frame. What reads badly is switching between them.

You are not obligated to state a cause of death. If the family wants a gesture toward it without detail, "after a long illness," "following a brief illness," or "unexpectedly" all do that work.

Step 4: Write the biography paragraph

This is the section that separates a memorable obituary from a form. Work through the life in rough chronology, then cut.

A workable order: birth and parents, childhood and schooling, military service, marriage, career, and the things they did outside of work.

Margaret was born June 8, 1943, in Warren, Ohio, to Frank and Rose Kovac. She graduated from Warren G. Harding High School in 1961 and earned her nursing diploma from St. Joseph Hospital School of Nursing in 1964. She married Thomas Delaney on April 17, 1965, at St. Mary's Church; they were married fifty-eight years. Margaret spent thirty-three years in pediatrics at Hamot Medical Center and retired in 2001.

Then add one paragraph of the specific, unrankable details. This is where you put:

• What they did every Sunday
• What they were unreasonable about
• What they made, fixed, grew, collected, or refused to throw away
• What they said so often that the family can hear it
• One thing they were genuinely good at that nobody would guess

Margaret cut her own hair for forty years and would tell you so. She kept a bird list going back to 1978, made pierogi from her mother's recipe every Christmas Eve, and could not watch a Pirates game without narrating it.

Three specific sentences do more than a paragraph of adjectives. If you are stuck, ask two other family members the same question: "What is the first thing you picture?" The overlap is usually the obituary.

Some of the same material will end up in the spoken tribute at the service. Our guide to writing a funeral speech covers how to take these details in a different direction for reading aloud.

Step 5: List survivors in the standard order

Survivors are conventionally listed from closest relationship outward:

1. Spouse or partner
2. Children, with their spouses in parentheses
3. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren, either by name or by count
4. Parents, if living
5. Siblings, with spouses in parentheses
6. Nieces, nephews, and extended family, usually as a group

She is survived by her husband, Thomas Delaney of Erie; her children, Katherine Delaney-Ross (Brian) of Pittsburgh, Michael Delaney (Sarah) of Erie, and Anne Delaney of Chicago; six grandchildren, Owen, Cara, Lucy, Ben, Nora, and Max; her sister, Patricia Kovac Hill of Youngstown; and many nieces and nephews.

Practical decisions families ask about:

• Grandchildren by name or by number? Either is standard. Naming them costs more in print and matters more to them.
• Partners who are not spouses? Include them, in the same position a spouse would occupy: "her partner of nineteen years, Denise Aiello."
• Ex-spouses? Usually omitted unless they co-parented and the family wants them named.
• Pets? Increasingly common and perfectly acceptable: "and his dog, Ranger."
• Stepchildren and blended families? List them as children unless the family prefers otherwise. If that conversation is fraught, our piece on blended family memorial planning may help.

Step 6: List those who died earlier

One short sentence, no elaboration.

She was preceded in death by her parents, Frank and Rose Kovac; her brother, Stephen Kovac; and her infant son, Daniel.

Naming a child who died is a decision the family makes together, and there is no wrong answer. Some families include the child in every obituary in the family for generations. Others keep it private.

Step 7: Write the service details literally

This is the block people scan for, so write it flat and complete. For each gathering, include the type, day of week, date, start time, venue name, and street address.

Visitation will be held Thursday, March 5, from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. at Burton Quinn Scott Cremation and Funeral Services, 602 West 10th Street, Erie. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated Friday, March 6, at 10:00 a.m. at St. Jude the Apostle Church, with burial to follow at Calvary Cemetery. A reception will be held in the parish hall.

Lines for other situations:

• "A celebration of life will be held at a later date."
• "Services will be private."
• "Interment will be private at the family's request."
• "In accordance with her wishes, no service will be held."
• "The service will be livestreamed; a link is available on the funeral home's website."

If the gathering is not a traditional funeral, saying so avoids a lot of phone calls. Our explainer on what a celebration of life is is a useful link to give relatives who ask what to expect, and our memorial service timeline covers how the day usually runs.

Step 8: Add memorial contribution instructions

If the family prefers donations to flowers, say so directly and name the recipient precisely enough that people can act on it.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Alzheimer's Association, Greater Pennsylvania Chapter, 2589 Interstate Drive, Harrisburg, PA 17110, or at alz.org.

Common recipients: the hospice or hospital unit that provided care, a church or parish, a scholarship fund at the person's school, an animal shelter, a food bank, a research foundation, or an education fund for young children. If the family is raising money for expenses, "Contributions to assist the family may be made at [link]" is a normal and accepted line.

Skip the section entirely if the family has no preference. "In lieu of flowers" with nothing after it reads as unfinished.

Step 9: Close, cut, and check

The closing line. One sentence, or none. Options that work: a phrase the person actually said, a line of scripture or a lyric, a note of thanks to caregivers, or a plain farewell.

The family thanks the staff of the Sarah A. Reed Retirement Center for their care and kindness.

"You can sleep when you're done." She is done. She has earned it.

Cutting for print. Newspapers charge by line, inch, or word, so a long obituary can multiply the bill quickly. If you need a shorter version, cut in this order: the extra biography paragraph, grandchildren's individual names, employer detail, the closing line. Keep the announcement, survivors, and service details intact. Then publish the full-length version on the funeral home's site, on an online obituary platform, or on a memorial page, where length usually costs nothing.

The final check. Read it aloud, then hand it to someone who did not write it. Ask that person to verify only four categories: every name spelling, every date, every time, and every address. Grief measurably affects attention and working memory, which is exactly why proofreading your own copy right now is unreliable. Our piece on grief brain fog explains what is happening.

What should you leave out of an obituary?

Obituaries are public, permanent, and indexed by search engines within hours. Leave out:

• The street address of the deceased or of any survivor. Homes standing empty during a funeral are a known target.
• Full date of birth combined with the mother's maiden name. That pairing answers two standard identity-verification questions. Birth year alone is safer.
• The exact time and location of the service if the family has genuine safety concerns, though most families accept the tradeoff.
• Anything the family has not agreed on. Once it is printed, it is printed.
• Grievances. An obituary written to settle something reads as settling something.

How do you write an obituary when the relationship was complicated?

Not every death is a clean loss, and an obituary is not a verdict on a relationship. You are allowed to write something short, factual, and neutral. Name, age, date, the few biographical facts you know, survivors, service information. No warmth is required, and no reader will count the sentences.

If several family members are working from very different feelings about the same person, agree on a floor rather than a ceiling: what facts belong in, what stays out, and who has final sign-off. Writing to what everyone can accept, rather than to what any one person wants, is what keeps an obituary from becoming its own conflict. Our piece on when families disagree about memorial choices works through that negotiation.

What if you barely knew the biographical details?

This happens often with estranged relatives, with people who outlived everyone who knew them young, and with sudden deaths where nobody has the paperwork yet.

Three places to look:

1. The funeral home's death certificate worksheet. It already contains birth date, birthplace, parents' names, and occupation, because state vital statistics require them.
2. Public records. Marriage licenses, county property records, and yearbooks fill in dates. Newspapers.com and local library archives can surface a wedding announcement or a retirement notice.
3. The people who show up. Coworkers and neighbors at the visitation supply details the family never had. It is entirely acceptable to publish a short obituary now and post a longer version online later.

A short fill-in template

[FULL NAME], [AGE], of [CITY, STATE], died on [DAY, DATE] at [PLACE].

[FIRST NAME] was born [DATE] in [CITY] to [PARENT] and [PARENT]. [HE/SHE] graduated from [SCHOOL] and worked as [OCCUPATION] at [EMPLOYER] for [NUMBER] years. On [DATE], [HE/SHE] married [SPOUSE].

[Two or three specific sentences: what they did, made, said, or refused to stop doing.]

[HE/SHE] is survived by [SPOUSE]; [CHILDREN AND SPOUSES]; [NUMBER] grandchildren; and [SIBLINGS]. [HE/SHE] was preceded in death by [NAMES].

[SERVICE TYPE] will be held [DAY, DATE] at [TIME] at [VENUE, ADDRESS]. [Burial/interment detail.]

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to [ORGANIZATION].

[Closing line.]

For nine complete worked examples, including a veteran, a sudden death, a young parent, and a private cremation, see our obituary templates and samples. If you are writing for a parent, we have separate guides for an obituary for a mother and an obituary for a father.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to write an obituary?

Once the facts are collected, most people draft an obituary in 45 to 90 minutes. Gathering dates, name spellings, and service details usually takes longer than the writing. Families who are working from a template and a completed fact list often finish in under an hour.

Who should write the obituary?

The closest surviving family member usually writes it, often with input from siblings or adult children. Funeral homes routinely offer to write or edit obituaries, and most will submit them to newspapers on your behalf. Asking one relative who writes well to produce the first draft, then circulating it for corrections, is the fastest reliable method.

What tense should an obituary be written in?

Past tense throughout, with two conventional exceptions: "is survived by" and "is preceded in death by" are written in present tense. Keep the rest of the piece in past tense consistently.

Do you list grandchildren by name in an obituary?

Both approaches are standard. Listing a count, such as "eleven grandchildren," is shorter and cheaper in print. Naming each one is more personal and matters to the grandchildren. Many families name them in the online version and give the count in the print version.

How soon after a death should an obituary be published?

Most obituaries are published two to seven days after the death, because they carry the service details. Newspapers generally need copy 24 to 48 hours before the print date, and weekend editions have earlier cutoffs. If services are not scheduled yet, publish with "services will be announced" rather than waiting.

Can you write an obituary yourself instead of paying the funeral home?

Yes. Families frequently write their own obituary and hand the final text to the funeral home for submission. The publication fee charged by the newspaper is separate from any writing assistance the funeral home provides, so writing it yourself lowers the total cost only if the funeral home bills separately for writing.

Is a death notice the same as an obituary?

No. A death notice is a short paid announcement of roughly 40 to 75 words containing the name, age, date of death, and service details. An obituary is the longer piece that includes the biography. Many families publish a death notice in print to control cost and a full obituary online.