Obituary Templates

What an obituary does

An obituary carries three jobs at once. It is a notice, so that people who knew your person learn the news from you and not from a rumor. It is a story, the first and sometimes only written account of a whole life. And it is an invitation, telling people where to gather, when to come, and where to send what they want to give.

You do not have to do all three jobs perfectly. A short notice with the right names and the right times serves people well. A longer story serves them differently. Both are honest work, and both count.

Write it in the past tense, in the third person, and read it aloud once before you send it anywhere. Your ear will catch what your eyes miss.

The three lengths

Most obituaries come in one of three sizes, and it helps to choose your size before you start writing.

The short notice runs about 50 to 100 words. Newspapers usually charge by the line, and a full obituary in print can cost several hundred dollars, so many families run the short version in the paper and put the longer story online, where it is often free through the funeral home or a memorial page. The short notice holds the name, the age, the city, the date of death, the service details, and one line about who is left behind.

The standard obituary runs about 200 to 350 words. This is the shape most people picture. It adds the outline of a life. Where they were born, who they married, what they did for work, what they loved, who survives them.

The full life story can run 500 words or more. It has room for scenes, sayings, and the small true details that make a person recognizable on the page. If you have the time and the material, this is the version grandchildren will read someday.

Which length to choose

• Short notice, 50 to 100 words, when print costs matter or you only need to announce the services
• Standard, 200 to 350 words, when you want the life outlined and the family named
• Full life story, 500 words or more, when you want the person on the page, not just the facts

Check these before you publish

The errors that hurt most are the simple ones. A middle name spelled wrong. A grandchild left off the list of survivors. A service time that changed after the notice went to print. These are the mistakes families remember for years, and every one of them is preventable with ten careful minutes.

Read the survivors list to at least one other family member before you submit anything. Say the names out loud. In-laws, stepchildren, and half-siblings are the people most often missed, and being missed in an obituary lands hard on a grieving person.

Confirm the service details with the funeral home the same day you publish. Then check the dates. It is surprisingly common to get the year of birth wrong by one, or to write this year's date for a wedding that happened decades ago.

The final read-through

• Every name spelled correctly, including middle names and maiden names
• Dates of birth and death, checked against a document, not memory
• The survivors list, read aloud to another family member
• Predeceased family members, if you name them, spelled and ordered with the same care
• Service times, addresses, and dates, confirmed with the funeral home
• Where to send flowers or donations, with the charity's exact name

How the free writer works

The obituary writer asks you a short series of plain questions. Their name. Where they were born. Who they loved. What they did with their days. What you want people to know. You answer in your own words, at your own pace, and you can skip anything.

Then it assembles your answers into a finished draft. It does not invent facts, add flourishes, or guess at anything you did not tell it. Every sentence in the draft comes from something you wrote, arranged into the shape newspapers and funeral homes expect.

You review every line before it goes anywhere. Change what sounds wrong. Cut what you do not need. When it reads like your person, copy it, print it, or download it. It is free, and nothing you write is published until you choose to publish it.