What to Include in an Obituary

The full checklist

Work down this list with a pen and a phone. Anything you cannot confirm in two minutes, mark and come back to.

You will not use all of it. A short newspaper notice may use ten of these items; a funeral home page will use most of them. If you are writing for a paid print notice, see the short obituary examples to see which items families drop first.

The essentials, with the wording families use

The first sentence does most of the work. It carries the name, the age, the town, the date and, if you want, the manner of death. Every version below is conventional and correct.

Where they died

Three options, all normal: name the place (“at Riverbend Hospice House”), keep it general (“at home, surrounded by her family”), or say nothing at all. Do not print a room number, a unit name or a facility address.

Birth, school and work

One sentence each is enough. “Born September 2, 1946 in Chattanooga to James and Ruby Whitaker” carries the whole opening of a life. For work, name the employer and the number of years, then stop. Thirty-one years as a lineman tells a reader more than four job titles ever will.

Military service

Branch, years, and one detail if you have it. “He served in the United States Navy from 1964 to 1968 aboard the USS Bellwood.” If there will be military honors at the graveside, say so in the service details, because people plan around it.

The two or three details that make it a person

This is the only part of an obituary nobody else can write. General praise is true of everyone and lands on no one. She loved her family tells a reader nothing. She kept a standing Sunday phone call with each of her children is the same fact, and it is the sentence people repeat at the reception. If you are stuck, ask two relatives for the first thing that comes to mind and use whatever they say.

Naming family members

Read this section twice. The survivors list is what people scan for, and an omission is remembered for years. Traditional order, from closest outward:

Conventions worth knowing

Write the list on paper first, read it aloud, and have one other family member check it before it goes to the funeral home. That single step prevents nearly every survivors-list problem. The complete obituary examples show the finished paragraph in context if you want to see it working.

Service, burial and donation details

Everything in this section is instructions to strangers who want to come. Each event needs the same five facts, in the same order.

List the events in the order they happen: visitation or wake, then the funeral or memorial service, then the burial or committal, then the reception. If the burial is private, say so plainly, in the words “burial will be private”, so nobody follows the family to the cemetery. If the reception is family only, leave it out of the obituary entirely.

When the arrangements are not settled

Publish anyway. “A memorial service will be announced at a later date” is a complete and normal sentence. The alternative, which is waiting a week for the church calendar, means people find out too late.

Donations

Use the charity’s full legal name, not the nickname, and give one way to give: a website, or “in care of the funeral home.” The phrase “in lieu of flowers” is standard; “in place of flowers” and “memorial gifts may be directed to” both read well. If the family genuinely wants flowers, say nothing at all rather than inventing a charity.

Optional details that are often worth adding

Anything longer than a line or two, whether a poem, a psalm or a favorite hymn text, sits better in the printed funeral program than in a newspaper notice, where it is charged by the line and often cut for space.

What to leave out

Obituaries are public, permanent and indexed. A few details cause real problems, and none of them are missed by readers.

Hard cases

Most families hit at least one of these. There is a conventional answer to each, and in every case the conventional answer is quieter than you expect.

An estranged child

You have three options: name them in the survivors list without comment, use a general line (“and his children”) without individual names, or leave them out. Naming without comment is the least likely to cause damage, and it says nothing about the relationship. Leaving a living child out of an obituary is read by everyone who knows the family, and it cannot be undone.

A divorce, or a second marriage

The current spouse goes in the survivors list. A former spouse is usually mentioned, if at all, in the life section, as a fact: “He married Linda Hollis in 1974; they later divorced.” If there were children from the first marriage, listing all the children together is the kindest form, and it is what most families do.

Death by suicide or overdose

You are under no obligation to name a cause. “Died unexpectedly” is complete, honest and widely used. Some families choose to name it because they want the silence to end, and that is a legitimate choice too. If you do, keep it to one clause, avoid describing the method, and consider adding a single line pointing to help, such as the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Both choices are respectable. Make it as a family, not at midnight alone.

A very short life, or a child

Everything shrinks except the person. Name them fully, give the dates, name the parents and siblings, and include one or two specific things: the song they wanted played over and over, the thing that made them laugh. Do not feel obliged to fill a standard shape. Forty words is a complete obituary for anyone.

Nobody agrees on the wording

Decide who has the final say before you start drafting, not after. It is usually the next of kin or the person signing the funeral home paperwork. Everyone else gets to read it once and suggest changes. This one rule prevents more damage than any wording choice on this page.

Check these before you send it

Read the draft out loud, slowly, to one other person. Errors you have looked at nine times become obvious the moment you say them.

When the facts are gathered, the writing is the short part. If you want the structure to hold you up, the step-by-step writing guide takes it in order, and the standard obituary format page shows how the sections are sequenced. Reposa asks you for exactly the items on this checklist, one screen at a time, writes a first draft from your answers, and sets it into the program. The name and dates you enter there also go onto the prayer cards, so you type them once.

And a permission worth having on a week like this: you can leave blanks. An obituary with no birth town, no college and no clubs is still a complete obituary. Nobody is grading it.