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How to Write an Obituary (With Two Complete Examples)

Writing an obituary is usually handed to whoever in the family is thought to be good with words, at the worst possible moment, with a deadline attached. It is not a literary task. An obituary is a public notice with a job to do: tell people a death has happened, tell them who this person was, and tell them where and when to show up. Do those three things clearly and you have written a good one.

This page gives you the standard structure, the details you should deliberately leave out for security reasons, how newspapers actually bill for the space, and two complete examples written from scratch — a short death notice and a fuller obituary — that you can use as patterns. If you are working through everything else at the same time, our step-by-step checklist for what to do when someone dies covers the rest in order.

One practical note before you start: get the service details confirmed with the funeral home, the cemetery, and the clergy before you write a word of the last paragraph. Times move, and a correction in a newspaper costs as much as the original notice.

An obituary is not a eulogy

People use the two words interchangeably and then get frustrated writing the wrong thing. An obituary is published. It appears in a newspaper, on a funeral home's website, or on an obituary site, it is largely factual, and it is written for a wide audience — neighbors, former coworkers, distant cousins. It gets clipped and kept; someone researching the family in eighty years will read it.

A eulogy is spoken. It happens once, in a room of people who already know, and it can be as personal and as funny as you want. Nobody charges by the line. If what you need is the thing you will say out loud at the service, that is a different job: how to write a eulogy walks through it, and eulogy examples has finished pieces you can read for rhythm.

Most families write both, and it is fine to lift a good sentence from one into the other. Just remember which one strangers will read.

What goes in, in order

Almost every obituary in an American newspaper follows the same six blocks. Editors expect them in this order, and readers scan for them in this order.

1. The announcement. Full name — including a maiden name and the name people actually called them — age, city of residence, and the date of death. You can add a short phrase such as "peacefully at home" or "after a long illness." You are never required to give a cause of death, and plenty of families do not.

2. The biographical facts. Birth year and birthplace, parents' names, schooling, military service with branch and era, work history, marriage with the year and place, congregation, and the things that filled the years: the coaching, the garden, the choir, the shop. Keep it chronological — it reads more cleanly and stops you circling back and repeating yourself.

3. Survived by. The conventional order is spouse, then children with their spouses in parentheses, then grandchildren and great-grandchildren (usually counted rather than named), then siblings, then a closing phrase for nieces, nephews, and friends. Get spellings from a document.

4. Preceded in death by. Parents, a late spouse, siblings, and any child who died before them. Do not quietly leave out a baby who died decades ago. Families notice, and it hurts.

5. Service details. Visitation, the funeral or memorial service, the burial or committal, and any reception — each with the day, the date, the time, and the venue name. This is the paragraph people actually need, so it should be impossible to misread.

6. Donations in lieu of flowers. If the family prefers donations, name the organization exactly as it is legally named, with its city or website, so nobody sends money to a similarly named charity. A closing line thanking a hospice team or a group of nurses is common and always welcome.

What to leave out, and why it matters more than people think

An obituary announces, in one public place, that a specific person is dead, who their closest relatives are, and the precise hour when all of those relatives will be standing somewhere else. That combination is useful to two kinds of criminal, and nobody warns families about it.

Leave out the full date of birth. Publish the birth year, or just the age. A full legal name paired with an exact date of birth is most of what someone needs to open credit in a dead person's name, and the credit bureaus may not have the death on file for weeks. No reader needs the month and day.

Leave out the mother's maiden name. It is still a live security answer on older bank, pension, and insurance accounts — including the accounts the survivors are about to have to deal with. Write "born to Robert and Helen" and stop, or use her married name.

Leave out home addresses. Not the deceased's, not the surviving spouse's, not the adult children's. If people are gathering at a family home, write "at the family home" and pass the address by phone or text to those actually invited.

Do not spell out that a house is now empty. "She lived alone for the past nine years," plus an address, plus a service time is a burglary schedule. Ask a friend or neighbor who is not attending to sit at the house during the service, and if your police department offers a vacancy check on its non-emergency line, use it.

Also leave out the middle names of living relatives, the full names of minor grandchildren (first names are plenty), the employers of survivors, and anything financial — an estate's size, a pension, an insurance policy, a lawsuit. Never publish a Social Security number, a policy number, or a service number.

Two related things. Published obituaries are harvested automatically, so a surviving spouse's phone may start ringing with callers claiming the deceased owed a debt; you do not have to discuss anything with a caller and you can insist on it in writing. Online guest books also attract fake condolence posts carrying links. Notifying the three credit bureaus early is one reason that job sits near the top of the what to do when someone dies checklist.

Example 1: a short death notice

This is the version most families actually need: cheap, and it does the entire practical job. Every name and detail below is invented.

VILLANUEVA, Rosa M., 84, of Bakersfield, died January 12, 2026, at home. Born in Nogales, Arizona, she managed school cafeterias in Kern County for thirty-one years. She is survived by her son, Daniel (Kim); her daughter, Teresa Ruiz; seven grandchildren; and her sister, Lucia. She was preceded in death by her husband, Alberto. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Saturday, January 17, at St. Francis Catholic Church, with burial to follow at Union Cemetery. Arrangements are in the care of Riverside Funeral Home.

That is about ninety words, and notice what it leaves out: no exact date of birth, no mother's maiden name, no street address, no note that she lived alone. It still tells every reader what they need.

Example 2: a fuller obituary

Roughly the length a family writes when they want the record to say something. Again, everything here is invented.

Harold "Hal" Eugene Whitaker, 79, of Dayton, Ohio, died on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, with his family around him.

Hal was born in 1946 in Wheeling, West Virginia, the second of four children of Eugene and Marie Whitaker. The family moved to Dayton when he was nine, and he never really left. He graduated from Belmont High School in 1964 and enlisted in the U.S. Navy, serving four years, two of them aboard a destroyer in the Western Pacific. He came home, hired on as a tool and die maker at a plant on the north side, and stayed thirty-four years, including two terms as a union steward.

He married Patricia Nowak in 1971 at Holy Trinity Church. They raised three children in the same east side house and were married fifty-five years.

Hal coached Little League for eleven seasons and could still tell you the score of a game from 1987. He was a fixture at the parish Wednesday breakfast. He kept a 1968 pickup that he refused to drive in the rain. He was a patient teacher and a genuinely terrible singer, and he was present at every graduation, recital, and hospital bedside that mattered.

He is survived by his wife, Patricia; his children, Michael (Anne) of Columbus, Susan Whitaker-Adeyemi (Tunde) of Cincinnati, and David of Dayton; nine grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and his sister, Joan Mercer of Wheeling. He was preceded in death by his parents; his brothers, Ray and Thomas; and his infant daughter, Ellen.

Visitation will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday, March 6, at Riverside Funeral Home. A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Saturday, March 7, at Holy Trinity Church, followed by burial with military honors at Calvary Cemetery. A reception will follow in the parish hall.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the Belmont High School band program or to a hospice organization of the donor's choosing.

The family thanks the hospice nurses and aides who were kind to all of us.

What makes that work is not adjectives but one concrete detail per paragraph. The terrible singing and the pickup he would not drive in the rain say more about Hal than "loving husband and devoted father" ever could. When you get stuck, reach for a specific rather than a word.

How the paper charges

Newspapers price obituaries by the line, by the column inch, or by the word, and a photograph is normally a flat add-on. A metropolitan daily costs considerably more than a county weekly for identical text, weekend editions often carry a premium, and running the notice more than one day multiplies the cost. That is why the gap between a ninety-word notice and a four-hundred-word obituary is not only a matter of taste. Our obituary cost calculator lets you put in your own word count and rate before you commit.

Two things families routinely get wrong. First, the funeral home usually places the notice, and the charge appears on its statement as a cash advance item. Under the FTC Funeral Rule, a funeral provider that charges you more for a cash advance item than it actually paid has to disclose that, so ask directly whether the figure is the newspaper's price or includes a handling charge. You can also call the paper's obituary desk and place it yourself. Second, the posting on the funeral home's own website is usually included at no extra cost, so if money is tight, that plus a phone tree does the same work as a paid print notice. No law anywhere requires you to publish an obituary.

Deadlines, and the mistake that costs twice

Most papers want finished copy at least a day ahead, with a hard cutoff in the early afternoon for the next morning's edition and earlier cutoffs for weekend and holiday editions. Ask your paper for its cutoff rather than assuming, and ask whether it accepts submissions only through a funeral home.

The expensive mistake is publishing before the service details are locked. Cemetery availability, clergy schedules, and the funeral home's calendar are the three things that move, and once the notice runs, a correction is billed like a new one. Confirm all three yourself, then submit.

Before you send it, run this pass. Read every date and time out loud, including the day of the week — "Saturday, March 7" is wrong if March 7 is a Friday. Check every name against a document rather than a memory. Confirm the charity's exact legal name. Have two relatives sign off, ideally the ones most likely to be hurt by an omission. Make sure nobody learns of the death from the newspaper; the closest people get a phone call first. Then read it once more hunting only for date of birth, maiden name, and street address.

If the obituary is one item on a much longer list, work from our funeral planning checklist so nothing else slides while you are writing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to publish an obituary?

No. There is no legal requirement anywhere in the United States to publish an obituary or a death notice. It is a courtesy and a practical announcement, not a legal step, and skipping the paid newspaper notice does not affect the death certificate, the estate, or any benefit claim. Many families now post only on the funeral home's website, which is usually included in the price, and call or text the people who need to know.

What should I leave out of an obituary for safety reasons?

Leave out the full date of birth, the mother's maiden name, and any home address. Name plus exact date of birth is most of what is needed to open credit in a dead person's name, and a maiden name is still a security answer on older accounts. A published home address combined with a published service time also tells a burglar exactly when the house will be empty, so avoid printing addresses of the deceased or of surviving relatives, and avoid noting that someone lived alone.

Do I have to say what the person died of?

No. Cause of death is entirely optional and newspapers do not require it. Families often use a general phrase such as "after a long illness," "peacefully at home," or "unexpectedly," and many say nothing at all. The only place a cause of death is required is the death certificate, which is completed by a physician, hospice, or the medical examiner, not by you.

How much does an obituary cost, and who pays for it?

It depends entirely on the publication, because papers charge by the line, the column inch, or the word, and a photo is usually extra. A metropolitan daily can cost several times what a county weekly charges for identical text. The funeral home normally places it and passes the charge through on its statement as a cash advance item, which means the bill lands with whoever signed the funeral contract. Ask whether the amount is the paper's own price or includes a handling fee.

Should I let the funeral home write it?

It depends. Funeral homes are good at the mechanical parts — the standard order, the service paragraph, meeting the paper's deadline and format — and most will draft the whole thing from a form you fill in. What they cannot supply is the specific detail that makes the person recognizable. A good split is to let them handle the structure and the submission while a family member writes the two or three sentences about who this person actually was, then read the final version yourself before it goes anywhere.