How to Write an Obituary

An obituary is a short factual piece with a well-worn shape. Follow the six steps below and you can have a usable first draft in about an hour, even at the end of a very long day. There is a complete worked example further down, from a family’s rough notes to a finished text.

Updated November 8, 202613 min readWritten by the Reposa team

On this page

The six steps
What to gather first
Notes to finished draft
Naming the survivors
Wording for the hard parts
How long, and where it goes
The last check before you send it

The six steps, start to finish

Collect the facts before you write a sentence
Writing stalls on missing information far more often than on missing words. The list in the next section takes about fifteen minutes of phone calls and saves an hour of staring at a blank page.
If a fact is not available tonight, leave a gap and keep going. The funeral home can update the online version right up until it goes to print.
Write the opening line
Nearly every obituary opens with the same six pieces: full name, age, town, the word died, the date, and where. Ruth Anne Delacroix, 87, of Cedar Falls, Iowa, died at home on Tuesday, March 10, 2026. That is a complete opening.
It reads plainly because its job is plain: telling people quickly who this is about. Add the cause only if the family wants it named, and one clause is enough.
Write the life in five or six sentences
Go in order. Born where and to whom. School. Military service. The one or two jobs that mattered. Marriage. Church, union, lodge or team. One sentence each is plenty.
Then stop and add two or three specific things she actually did. “She loved to cook” could be anyone. “She made nine pies every Thanksgiving and gave away eight of them” is a person.
List the survivors, closest first
Spouse, then children with their spouses in parentheses, then grandchildren, great-grandchildren, parents and siblings. Then a separate sentence for the people who died first. This is the part families most often get wrong, so it has its own section below.
Add the service details
Day, date, time, the name of the venue, its street address and the city. Give visitation, the service, the burial and any reception in that order. If the arrangements are not settled, write “Services will be announced” and publish anyway rather than waiting.
Read it aloud, then hand it to one other person
Reading out loud catches the sentences that sound strange and the ones that run too long. Then send it to exactly one other family member to check names, dates and spellings. Two checkers is fine. Six is how a draft stops moving altogether.

That is the whole method. If an hour is more than you have this week, Reposa asks these same questions in a short form, writes a first draft from your answers, and sets it into the funeral program for you to edit.

What to gather before you start

The facts an obituary needs

Full legal name, plus nickname and maiden name · spelled exactly as it should appear in print
Age, date of death, and the town they lived in · the opening sentence carries all three
Date and place of birth, and both parents' names
Schools, military branch and years, and the main jobs · one or two jobs, not a resume
Marriage: spouse’s name, the year, and where
Church, union, lodge, volunteer work, teams · the places people knew them from
Survivors and those who died first, with spellings · get this from two people if you can
Visitation, service, burial and reception details · day, date, time, venue, street address, city
Where donations should go · the exact organization name, and a mailing address or website

Spellings are worth an extra phone call. A misprinted grandchild’s name is the detail families remember for years, and once a newspaper has run it there is nothing to be done. Read every name back to whoever gave it to you, letter by letter for anything unusual.

If you want the longer version of this list, including the details that are safer to leave out, what to include in an obituary goes through them one at a time.

From a family’s notes to a finished draft

Here is roughly what one family sent over, typed into a phone. Every name, town and employer below is invented.

Ruth Delacroix, 87, Cedar Falls. Died at home March 10. Born in Waterloo 1938, maiden name Kovach, dad worked at the tractor plant. Married Gene 1959, he passed in 2019. Four kids. Taught kindergarten forever, like 30 years. St. Paul’s. Made everyone’s wedding cakes. Hated having her picture taken. 11 grandkids, 3 greats. Service Saturday at the church, 10:30.

Those notes already contain everything an obituary needs. Put in the standard order and finished into sentences, they become this.

The finished draft

267 words

Ruth Anne Delacroix, 87, of Cedar Falls, Iowa, died peacefully at her home on Tuesday, March 10, 2026.

Ruth was born on April 2, 1938 in Waterloo, Iowa, to Frank and Helen Kovach. Her father worked thirty-one years at the tractor plant, and Ruth grew up two blocks from the river with three brothers and a bicycle she refused to share.

She graduated from Waterloo East High School in 1956 and married Eugene Delacroix on June 20, 1959, at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, where she remained a member for the next sixty-seven years.

Ruth taught kindergarten in the Cedar Falls schools for thirty years. She kept every class photograph, and she could still name the children in them.

She baked the wedding cake for what she estimated was half the congregation, refused payment every time, and would not be photographed at any of the receptions. She kept a garden she described as stubborn. She wrote actual letters.

Ruth is survived by her children, Michael Delacroix (Anne) of Ames, Susan Hartley (Tom) of Cedar Falls, Paul Delacroix of Denver, and Ellen Kovach Delacroix of Minneapolis; eleven grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and her brother, Frank Kovach Jr. of Waterloo. She was preceded in death by her husband, Eugene, in 2019, and by her brothers, Stanley and Robert.

Visitation will be held Friday, March 13, from 5 to 7 p.m. at Ferguson Funeral Home. A funeral service will follow at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, March 14, at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, with burial at Fairview Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Cedar Falls Public Library.

Nothing in that draft was invented. It was ordered, and the loose facts were turned into sentences. The two details that make it recognizable, the cakes and the photographs, came from one question asked twice: what will you miss on an ordinary Tuesday? Ask two family members that and use whatever they say first.

If you would rather start from something closer to your own situation, there are nine complete obituary examples written for a mother, father, spouse, grandparent, sibling or friend, and fill-in-the-blank templates if you prefer to work from a form.

Naming the survivors

The survivors list is where a well-meant draft causes real hurt. People read an obituary looking for their own name. Slow down for this paragraph even if you write the rest quickly.

The conventional order is:

Spouse or partner
Children, with their spouses in parentheses
Grandchildren, then great-grandchildren, usually first names only
Parents, if living
Siblings, with their spouses in parentheses
Then a group line: “and many loving nieces, nephews and cousins”

Step-children, long-term partners and in-laws should be named the way the family actually thinks of them, not the way a form would. If a daughter-in-law helped care for someone for four years, she does not have to sit inside a parenthesis.

Estrangement and divorce need a decision rather than an accident. An ex-spouse is usually left out unless the family was close to them. A living child, however difficult the relationship, is normally still named. Omitting one is the single thing most likely to become a permanent grievance, and there is no way to un-print it later.

A dog or a horse can be mentioned in a clause and often is. Keep it to a few words at the end of the list.

Wording for the parts that are hard to say

For the death itself

died at home on March 10
died peacefully, surrounded by her family
died unexpectedly on Sunday evening
passed away at Mercy Hospital after a short illness
went home to be with the Lord
entered eternal rest

Plain “died” is not cold. In print it reads as steadiness, and most newspapers prefer it. Use the softer wording if it is what the family says out loud, not because the direct word seems harsh.

For the cause, if you name it

after a long illness
following a short illness
after two years of living with cancer
from injuries sustained in a car accident
after a long struggle with addiction

Saying nothing at all is a complete answer, and it is the most common one. Avoid the battle and fight metaphors if you can. They quietly suggest that someone lost by not trying hard enough.

When the relationship was complicated

A short, factual notice is a legitimate choice and it does not announce anything to strangers. Name, age, town, date, the barest outline of a life, survivors, service. Four sentences is a real obituary. You are not required to write warmth you do not feel, and no one reading it will know the difference.

For flowers and donations

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Cedar Falls Public Library.
The family asks that donations be directed to St. Paul’s Lutheran Church.
Flowers are welcome, or a donation to the food pantry in her name.
In place of flowers, the family asks that you check on a neighbor.

How long it should be, and where it goes

The same obituary usually has to work in several places at once, and each of them wants a slightly different length. Write the longest version first and cut it down. Cutting is far easier than padding.

Where it goes	Usual length	What to know
Paid newspaper notice	60–150 words	Papers charge by the line, so every clause has a cost. Cut the biography first and keep the service details.
Funeral home website	200–400 words	Usually free and included in the arrangements. This is the version most people will actually read.
The funeral program	150–300 words	Has to fit a panel. Longer text means smaller type, which older guests will struggle with.
Online memorial page	Any length	No limit, so this is where the longer life story belongs if the family wants one.
A message to friends	40–80 words	Name, date, one line about the person, and where and when the service is.

You are allowed to do less than you think

There is no requirement to publish in a newspaper at all, and a growing number of families do not. There is no minimum length. A four-sentence notice on the funeral home website meets every obligation a family actually has. Nobody is grading this, and the people who loved the person will not measure their grief in words.

If you do want it in the paper, how to submit an obituary to a newspaper covers deadlines, what they charge for and the free places to publish instead. For the short version, short obituary examples are already cut to newspaper length.

The last check before you send it

Read for these, in this order

Every name spelled right · read them aloud to someone who knows the family
Every date checked twice · birth year, year of marriage, year of death
Service day, date and time · confirm with the funeral home on the day you submit
No living person listed as preceded in death · it happens more than you would expect
No home address of a surviving spouse · published obituaries tell people when the house will be empty
Not both the full date of birth and the mother’s maiden name · together they are the standard bank security questions
The donation organization named exactly · check the legal name, not the one everyone uses
One other family member has read the whole thing

Confirm the service times on the day you submit, not the day you wrote the draft. Times move while a family is still deciding, and more than one family has spent a Friday evening calling thirty people because the paper printed the visitation hour they were originally given.

Once the text is settled it has to go to the funeral home, possibly the newspaper, and into the funeral program, where it sits alongside the order of service. If the rest of the week still feels shapeless, the funeral planning checklist lays out what has to happen and what can safely wait.

Common questions

How long does it take to write an obituary?

About an hour for a first draft if you have the facts in front of you, and much of that hour is spent on the list of survivors. Gathering the information beforehand is what saves the time. Families who sit down without the dates, spellings and service details usually stop halfway through to make phone calls and lose the thread.

Who is supposed to write the obituary?

There is no rule. Usually it falls to the person in the family who writes most easily, which is often not the next of kin. Anyone can draft it, but the immediate family should read and approve it before it goes anywhere, especially the survivors list. The funeral home will ask who is authorizing publication.

Do I have to say how the person died?

No. Many families leave it out entirely and no one thinks twice about it. If you do include it, one clause is enough: 'after a long illness', 'peacefully at home', 'unexpectedly'. You are never obliged to name a diagnosis, and you are never obliged to explain a death that was sudden or difficult.

Should I include the date of birth and mother’s maiden name?

Be careful with both together. A full date of birth plus a mother’s maiden name is the standard pair of security questions on a bank or credit account, and published obituaries are read by people who look for exactly that. Many families publish the birth year only, or the full date without the maiden name.

What if the family disagrees about the wording?

Decide in advance who has the final word, usually the spouse or the eldest child, and let that person make the call. Circulating a draft to six people almost always stalls it. If a specific line is causing an argument, cut the line. Nothing in an obituary is worth a lasting rift between the people left.

Is there a deadline for writing it?

Newspapers usually need the text a day or two before it runs, and often by late morning for the next day’s paper, so ask the funeral home for the exact cutoff. The version on the funeral home website can go up sooner and be edited later. If the arrangements are unsettled, publish 'services will be announced' and add them after.

Can I write the obituary in the first person?

You can, but it is unusual and it can be hard to read at length. The conventional third-person voice is not coldness, it is a shared form that lets a stranger scan it quickly. If you want a personal voice, put it in the eulogy or in a letter read at the service, where it will land better.