Obituary Editing Tips: How to Review and Proofread Before Publishing

Why Obituary Editing Matters More Than You Think

A published obituary cannot be corrected after print. Online obituaries on funeral home sites can sometimes be updated, but the cached version — the one Google indexes, the one people screenshot and share — lives forever in its original form. A misspelled name, a wrong age, or a service time that's off by an hour causes real-world consequences for a grieving family.

The problem is that the person editing the obituary is usually the same person who wrote it, and that person is usually grieving. Grief impairs working memory and attention to detail at exactly the moment when accuracy matters most. A deliberate, checklist-driven editing pass — ideally by a second person — catches errors that exhausted eyes miss.

The Editing Checklist

Work through this list in order. Each category catches a different class of error:

1. Factual Accuracy

• Full legal name spelled correctly, including middle name. Check against a birth certificate, driver's license, or passport — not memory.
• Age at death is mathematically correct (birth year to death year, adjusted for whether the birthday has passed).
• Date of death matches the funeral home's records.
• Birthplace matches official records. "Born in Brooklyn" is fine if they were born in a Brooklyn hospital, but check whether the family means Brooklyn, New York or Brooklyn, Connecticut.
• Parents' names are correct. If including a mother's maiden name (which you may want to omit for security reasons), verify the spelling with a living family member.
• Education — confirm the institution name and the degree. "University of California" is not the same as "University of California, Berkeley." "Attended" is not the same as "graduated from."
• Military service — branch, rank at discharge, and years of service should match the DD-214 if available.
• Survivors list — every name spelled correctly, no one accidentally omitted, no one included who has already died. Read the list aloud to a second family member.

2. Service Details

• Date, time, and location of the visitation and funeral are confirmed with the funeral home. Do not publish service details based on tentative plans.
• Address of the venue is correct and complete enough for someone unfamiliar with the area to find it (city and state, not just "First Baptist Church").
• Reception details, if included, match the actual plan.

3. Security Review

• No full date of birth (year only is safer)
• No home address of the deceased or surviving family members
• No mother's maiden name (a common security question for financial accounts)
• No specific workplace names that could enable pension or benefit fraud
• Service times don't reveal when the family's home will be empty (consider publishing the obituary after the service if burglary risk is a concern)

4. Tone and Consistency

• Read the entire obituary aloud. Awkward phrasing, missing transitions, and repeated words become obvious when spoken.
• Check that the survivors list follows a consistent format — either all with relationship labels ("his daughter, Sarah") or all without ("Sarah Carter"). Don't mix.
• If you used "passed away" in the opening, don't switch to "died" in the service details. Pick one convention and hold it.
• Remove any sentence that exists only because you felt you should include it, not because it adds real information or meaning.

5. Format and Submission

• If submitting to a newspaper: confirm the piece meets their word count or line count limits, uses accepted abbreviations, and includes a high-resolution photo (300 DPI minimum for print).
• Verify the submission method (email, online portal, fax, or through the funeral home) and the deadline.
• If publishing online: check that all links work, including memorial donation URLs.

The Second-Reader Pass

The single most effective editing step is handing the draft to someone who did not write it. That person will catch:

• Names the writer misspelled because their grief-impaired brain filled in what it expected to see
• Omissions the writer didn't notice because they "knew" the information was there
• Tone problems the writer can't hear because they're too close to the subject

The second reader doesn't need to be a professional editor. They need to be someone who can read the draft cold — without assuming they know what it says — and flag anything that looks wrong or unclear.

If no second reader is available, print the draft on paper and read it with a pen. The format change forces your brain to re-process the text instead of skating over familiar phrases.

Making Personal Tributes Land

If you want the obituary to include a personal tribute element — a detail that captures who the person was beyond their resume — place it after the biographical summary and before the survivors list. One specific detail is stronger than three generic adjectives:

• Weak: "He was a loving, generous, and devoted family man."
• Stronger: "He coached Little League for eleven years and never missed a game, even the ones in the rain that only four parents showed up to."

The specific detail gives readers something to remember. The adjective list gives them nothing they couldn't have guessed about any obituary subject.

The Secure Obituary Writing System includes both a structured editing checklist and a five-field security audit designed to catch the most common errors and privacy risks before the obituary goes to press or goes online.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many people should review the obituary before publication?

At minimum, two: the person who wrote it and one additional family member or trusted friend. For families with complex dynamics (blended families, estranged members, multiple siblings with strong opinions), circulating the draft to all stakeholders before submission prevents post-publication conflict. Set a deadline for feedback — "please review by 5 PM Thursday" — or the feedback cycle will delay publication past the service.

Can I edit an obituary after it's published online?

Most funeral home websites allow the family to request edits after publication. Legacy.com and similar aggregator sites may take longer to update. Newspaper print editions cannot be corrected — only a follow-up correction notice can be published, and most papers charge for that separately. Catching errors before publication is always easier and cheaper than correcting them after.

Should I hire a professional obituary writer?

If the family is too overwhelmed to write, a professional obituary writer (typical cost: $100–$500 depending on length and turnaround) or the funeral director can draft the piece from information the family provides. The family should still review the final draft for factual accuracy — no outside writer knows the family well enough to guarantee every detail.