Writing an obituary can be a formidable task. One of the most important aspects of obituary writing is, like the constant reminder of human mortality in art, culture and prayer, is intended to prepare people for the inevitability of death, and promote awareness of the art of dying well. Therefore obits generally do not state the cause of death. (Cause of death, if it's omitted, it may also be out of sensitivity to the family of course). Usually, though, there's no cause of death given for 'ordinary people' because the obit writer hasn't been provided with one, and the person isn't 'important' enough for the desk to tell them to dig one up. Cause of death is usually the result of an autopsy, which is not done before the funeral in most cases.

In small newspapers, where so much is preserved, the art of obituary writing is still practiced with a passion. The writer isn't limited to writing a three-paragraph summary of a person's life followed by a list of survivors; obits these days can be long captions under photographs, front-page news stories, or 1,000-word feature articles about the deceased and the impact he had on the world.

Obits sell papers! It turns out that obituaries help sell newspapers Obituaries have been refined over the years. When we talk about writing obits it is the craft of capturing a reality in a way that engages the interest of the readers and helps them associate their experience and lives with the lives of other members of humanity. A good obit evokes emotion and gives the reader a sense of the subject's character. The question facing the obituary writer is how to capture the essence of the subject in a tight and timely format. If you read the obit and find things you didn't know about the person, then the obit writer has done his job well.

Obit writers generally show respect for the deceased by using courtesy. Most creative writing being done in journalism today is the form of the obituary- the specific ways in which the writer used language to make the case within the constraints of normal obituary language use. Although obituary writers are always looking for compelling and inspiring stories to tell about how people lived their lives, when family members of the deceased needing professionally written obituaries, the hardest part of professional obituary writing is disappointing a family in some way by not being able to either run the obituary of a loved one or causing a mistake to appear in an obituary.

People love reading the obituary features each day. Obits sell papers. People will die whether we write an obit or not, but to be able to use words to memorialize their life is something special. Too many treat the obit page as a depressing burden, or at best a place to mention a lot of names to please a lot of readers. Well, magazines and newspapers are defiantly showing that obits can be as instructive as other journalism

Page 2 of 2 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 | Next