Writing Obituaries for the Commercial Appeal: A Field Guide from Someone Who Has Done It Too Many Times
The Commercial Appeal has been running obituaries in Middle Tennessee since the late 1800s. It started as business notices and funeral announcements. Over decades it became something else entirely. The obituary section became a place where ordinary people got their life summarized by someone who barely knew them. That tension between professional detachment and genuine warmth is what makes the tradition endure. I used to write these for a living. Not here exactly, but at a competing paper in the region. The mechanics transfer almost entirely. The real work starts when a family calls and says their father lived in Murfreesboro, died at 87, and they want him remembered as a good man. They don't say anything else. That silence is where most first-time writers stumble.
The Enduring Legacy Of The Commercial Appeal Obituary Celebrating The Lives Of Middle Tennessee
What makes the Commercial Appeal obituaries different from other regional publications comes down to scope and tone. Middle Tennessee as a concept covers more than Nashville proper. It stretches from Clarksville down to the Alabama border and over toward the Kentucky line. The people covered in those pages tend to share certain patterns: military service runs high, church involvement is nearly universal, and the mention of a lifelong trade or craft appears in roughly three out of four pieces. These aren't stereotypes. They are structural facts about the demographic the paper serves. The writing itself follows an older convention that has survived digital disruption better than most newspaper sections. You lead with the basics. Name, age, city of residence, date of death, and a single sentence establishing why this person mattered. Then you move chronologically through the life. Education, career, military service if applicable, marriage, children and grandchildren, memberships, hobbies, and finally the survivors and predeceased. The order is flexible but the convention matters. Readers expect it. Breaking it without reason creates confusion. One detail beginners consistently miss is the survivor list syntax. The Commercial Appeal prefers "survived by" rather than "leaving behind" or other variations. It sounds minor. It isn't. Families argue about placement of spouses versus children versus siblings. The standard approach is to list the surviving spouse first, then children in order of birth, then grandchildren, then parents if still living, then siblings. Predeceased relatives get a separate sentence near the end. This avoids the awkwardness of mentioning someone who died before the subject within the same breath as a living relative.
Here is where I encountered the edge case that changed how I approach this work. A family submitted an obituary for their mother who had been estranged from her eldest son for twenty years. They wanted him mentioned as predeceased, but the son was actually alive. The family thought he had died. I caught the discrepancy when the death certificate they provided listed his name with a current address in Georgia. Rather than running the piece with the error, I called the contact person directly. It turned out the family had confused him with his cousin, who had died the previous month. We corrected the record. The son was moved to the survivor list. The piece ran properly. This happens more often than you would think. Family grief distorts factual memory. The writer must be a fact-checker first and a wordsmith second. The pricing structure also matters practically. As of recent years, the Commercial Appeal charges by character count for standard obituaries with a minimum purchase that covers roughly one column inch. Extended pieces cost proportionally more. There is no free form anymore. Every word costs. This financial reality shapes the writing. You learn to compress efficiently. "He was a retired electrician from Jackson" replaces two longer sentences that say the same thing. Learning to count characters while drafting saves frustration at submission. Another nuance that experienced writers know but rarely explain: the photograph selection. Submissions that include a photo run a significantly higher chance of being placed in a more visible section. The paper does not guarantee photo placement, but editors clearly prefer it. The best photos are print-quality scans of physical photographs, not digital snapshots taken from social media. A clear headshot from the 1990s often works better than a recent blurry cell phone image. Resolution matters more than recency.
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The limitations of this format are worth stating plainly. The Commercial Appeal obituary is not a biography. It cannot be. You have limited space and a deadline that often aligns with the funeral schedule. Complex lives get flattened. An individual who lived three distinct careers across four countries will appear as a single paragraph. This is a structural weakness, not a writing failure. The only honest approach is to accept the constraint and focus on accuracy and dignity within it. Some families resist the character-count economy. They insist on including every achievement, every organization, every trip. The workaround is the bracketed addendum. Papers occasionally allow a brief paid extension at the end of the standard piece. It is usually sold separately and runs in the same section. Knowing this exists gives families an outlet when the main piece feels insufficient. You should mention it proactively. Families rarely know it is an option. If you are writing one now, here is the practical sequence I recommend. Gather the death certificate first. Verify the spelling of every name, including maiden names and middle names. Call the funeral home for the exact time and date of death. Cross-reference with the family's version because they may not know either yet. Draft the survivor list before writing the narrative because that list anchors everything else. Write the closing sentence last. The closing is what readers remember.
The tradition persists because it serves a genuine social function. Middle Tennessee communities are small enough that when someone dies, a significant portion of the readership knew them or knew someone who knew them. The obituary is not just a notice. It is a communal acknowledgment. The Commercial Appeal understands that better than most successors. The writing craft involved is straightforward. The emotional labor behind it is not. That combination is why the section survives despite declining print circulation across the industry.
