If you are reading this, you have probably just lost someone, and the job of writing their obituary has landed on you. First, take a breath. This guide will walk you through the whole thing in seven small steps, in roughly the order the sentences will appear on the page. You do not need to be a writer. You need about forty-five minutes, a few facts, and one or two memories — and if even that feels like too much today, our free guided writer will assemble a complete draft from your answers.
What an obituary is actually for
It helps to know the job before you start. An obituary has three audiences. The first is the community right now: friends, coworkers, church members, and old neighbors who need to learn of the death and find the service. The second is the wider circle of people across their whole life — classmates, army buddies, former students — who may only recognize them by a maiden name or a nickname. The third is the future: grandchildren and genealogists who will one day rely on this paragraph as the official summary of a life. Write with all three in mind and the structure almost builds itself.
Step 1 — Gather the facts first
Before writing a single sentence, collect the raw material. You will need their full legal name plus the names they actually went by (maiden name, nickname); their age; date and place of birth; date of passing; the city they called home; their work, and roughly how long they did it; military service, if any (branch and era); faith community, if any; and the names of immediate family — the living and the departed. Spellings matter enormously here: verify every name with a second family member, because a misspelled grandchild in print is a small wound a family remembers.
Step 2 — The announcement line
Every traditional obituary opens the same way, and there is comfort in the convention:
“Margaret Anne ‘Peggy’ Ellison (née Whitfield), 77, of Cedar Falls, Iowa, passed away peacefully on March 4, 2026.”
Name — with nickname in quotation marks and maiden name in parentheses — then age, home city, and date. “Passed away peacefully,” “died,” and “went home to the Lord” are all correct; use the register your family uses. Whether to mention the cause of death is entirely your choice, and “after a long illness” or “unexpectedly” is as much as anyone is owed. If it should be included, this first paragraph is where it goes.
Step 3 — The story of their life
This is the paragraph people fear, and it is easier than it looks. You are not writing a biography; you are writing two to five sentences that sketch the shape of a life. The classic ingredients: where they were born and raised, their education or trade, their work and how long they gave it, their service, their faith, and what they loved. Then — this is the part that makes an obituary theirs — one specific detail. Not “she was kind and generous,” which could be anyone, but “she read to her third-graders with all the voices for thirty-one years.” One concrete image outworks ten adjectives, every time.
If the person was young, spend these sentences on who they were and were becoming rather than a résumé. If the person was very old, resist the urge to compress ninety years into a list — choose the thread (the kitchen, the farm, the church, the shop) that everything else hung on. Our example obituaries show both approaches in full.
Step 4 — Family, in the customary order
The survivor list follows a convention that readers and editors expect. Spouse first, with years of marriage if you wish (“her husband of 52 years, Thomas”); then children in birth order with their spouses in parentheses; then grandchildren and great-grandchildren, named or counted; then parents and siblings; then, optionally, dear friends or caregivers. After the survivors comes “preceded in death by” and those who went before. Blended families should list people the way the person counted them, not the way the paperwork did — “his children” can simply include stepchildren, and love makes the list accurate.
Step 5 — Services and memorial wishes
Give the service type, time, date, and full location — this is the most practically important information in the whole obituary, so double-check it against what the funeral home has scheduled. If plans are not set, “services will be announced at a later date” is standard; if there will be none, “at her request, no formal services will be held” is dignified and complete. Close with memorial wishes if you have them: “In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to…” and, if the family wishes, a sentence of thanks to caregivers, hospice staff, or the church.
Step 6 — Read it aloud, then hand it over
Read the draft aloud once; your ear will catch what your eye missed. Then give it to one other person — ideally someone slightly less exhausted than you — to check every date, every name, every spelling. This is not about the writing. Grief makes numbers slippery, and the proofreader’s job is purely to protect you from the typo you cannot see.
Step 7 — Submitting, length, and cost
If a funeral home is involved, they will usually submit the obituary to the newspaper for you and publish it on their website at no extra charge. If you are submitting directly, call or check the paper’s obituary desk for the per-line rate, the photo fee, and the deadline. Most papers bill by the line — a line being only about thirty characters in a standard column — so a full-length obituary can cost several hundred dollars in a metro paper. A common and sensible approach is to run a short version in print and share the full version online and at the service. Our writer shows a live word, character, and estimated line count for exactly this reason.
A final word
There is no perfect obituary, and nobody is grading you. The obituary that says a true thing plainly — who they were, who loved them, and where to gather — honors its person completely. Write it with the love you already have, borrow structure from a template or the guided writer where it helps, and let it be finished. You have other things to carry this week.