Writing Obituaries at JC Press

Most people don't realize how much pressure sits on someone drafting these pieces. You're working with grieving families who may not know the rules, competing against tight word counts, and trying to honor a life while actually printing it on paper. It's more technical than it looks. The submission process for JC Press obituaries runs through their editorial desk. You typically file them via email or an online form, and they have a per-word rate that varies depending on length. Standard obituaries run between 200 and 500 words. Anything longer gets charged at a different tier. Length matters more than you'd think because editors will cut aggressively if it reads like a resume instead of a tribute.

The Inevitable Farewell Navigating Todays Obituaries At Jc Press With Depth And Respect

The real challenge isn't hitting word count. It's finding balance. Families want to include everything — every club, every award, every surviving cousin — but the best obituaries do the opposite. They pick the details that actually matter. I spent years watching bad obituaries get accepted simply because they were long. A friend of mine once submitted a 900-word piece about her father and it got cut down to 280 by the editor. The family was furious. Then they ran the shorter version and three separate people called the paper saying it captured him perfectly. The original version had read like a CV. Nobody connects with a list. Here's what most people miss: the closing paragraph is where the obituary either lands or falls apart. Most writers front-load facts — birth date, death date, survivors, service info — and then tack on a generic "he will be missed" line at the end. That closing paragraph is your only shot at emotional resonance. I always tell people to write it first, then build backward from there. Another counter-intuitive thing: include one flaw or quirk. A completely polished life story feels hollow and suspicious. Mention that he was notoriously bad at directions. That she collected spoons. Something small and human. It's what readers remember. I ran into a specific problem once that I never saw come up in any style guide. A family submitted an obituary for a woman who had been estranged from her son for twelve years. The son was listed as "predeceased by..." which implies he's dead. The son's ex-wife saw the paper and called the office in tears. We had to run a correction the next day. The workaround was simple but it cost us a day's circulation — we now require families to confirm the exact relationship wording before we publish anything. "Survived by" and "predeceased by" are not interchangeable, and neither is "estranged from." Those distinctions matter legally and emotionally. Word choice has consequences too. Avoid euphemisms. "Passed away" is fine but so is "died." "Departed" sounds evasive. "Kicked the bucket" is inappropriate unless the person genuinely had that kind of humor. JC Press editors flag language that feels canned. If you write something that could apply to anyone, they'll mark it up for specificity. The submission guidelines change occasionally, so always check their current page before filing. As of the last update I saw, they accept text submissions directly and prefer families to handle the initial draft themselves rather than using a funeral home template. The templates run generic because they're designed to cover every case. Specificity wins. Service details need to be exact. Names of cemeteries, exact addresses, timing, whether donations go to a specific fund or a general charity. I've seen multiple corrections printed because someone wrote "St. Mary's Cemetery" when the actual burial was at "St. Mary's Memorial Gardens." They're different places. If you're working with a family that's overwhelmed, offer to interview them rather than waiting for a draft. People remember things differently under stress. Asking structured questions — what was their job, what did they love doing on Sundays, who raised them — pulls out details that blank-page anxiety blocks.