Writing Obituaries When You're Dealing With Something Actual
Most people have no idea what goes into an obituary until they're standing in the middle of writing one at 11pm on a Tuesday with a funeral director breathing down their neck. Chambersburg, PA has been dealing with some serious losses recently, and the local papers are flooded with families struggling to get these right. Here's what actually matters when you're doing this. An obituary is not a press release. It's a factual record with emotional context, and the difference matters when you're dealing with something like a devastating loss where the community needs accurate information more than poetic language. In Chambersburg, papers like the Franklin County Courier and the Pennsylvania Bulletin run these notices, and they have actual requirements you need to know upfront. The first problem nobody warns you about is the timeline. Most local papers want obituaries submitted within 24 to 48 hours of death before the funeral. That sounds fine until you're trying to gather details from multiple family members who are all grieving at different speeds, and suddenly you're making decisions about word choice and what to include while your brain is still functioning on fumes. I learned this the hard way when my uncle passed and my cousin was handling logistics while I was supposed to draft the notice. We missed the Saturday deadline for the Sunday paper and had to wait until Monday, which meant the obituary ran a full day late and half the community saw the news through social media rumors first.
The workaround I use now is simple. Get the core facts locked in immediately: full legal name, date of birth, date of death, surviving family members, and service details. Write those in a text file or note app before anything else. Everything else—the life story, the personality touches, the community involvement—can wait. Those details are what separate a functional obituary from a good one, but they're not urgent in the first hour. When it comes to actual content, most families make the same mistake: they either write too little or too much, and both versions end up being unusable. The standard length for a local paper in the Chambersburg area runs about 150 to 300 words. Go under and it reads like a death certificate extension. Go over and you're paying for extra words or getting edited down anyway. The Franklin County papers typically charge by the line or by word count, so there's a financial incentive to be concise without being cold. Here's the part that catches people off guard: including cause of death is optional in Pennsylvania. Some families want it included because transparency matters to the community. Others exclude it, and that's completely fine. What matters more is getting the survivor list right. I've seen obituaries with missing spouses, grown children left out entirely, or predeceased relatives listed as if they were still alive. These errors happen because the person writing the obituary isn't the person who knows the entire family structure. Before you finalize anything, send the draft to at least two family members who have the full picture and ask them to check the names. It takes five minutes and prevents a massive embarrassment.
Another detail people overlook is the distinction between an obituary and a death notice. A death notice is essentially a legal filing—names, dates, funeral home info, sometimes a brief line. An obituary includes biographical content. Papers in the Chambersburg area will publish either one, but they cost different amounts and serve different purposes. If you just need the legal requirement covered, a death notice is faster and cheaper. If you want the community to actually understand who the person was, write the obituary. Most families in Franklin County do both, which doubles the cost but gets everything on the record. When a loss is particularly devastating—accidents, sudden deaths, situations that affect the whole community—the obituary becomes something more than a personal document. It's a public acknowledgment that something real happened. In Chambersburg, I've seen obituaries for individuals draw responses from people who never met the deceased but felt connected through work, church, or community organizations. The paper becomes a space where the town processes grief collectively. That's not something you can plan for, but it's worth understanding when you're deciding how much detail to include about the person's life and involvement. If you're dealing with this right now, here's the practical path: call the funeral home handling arrangements and ask if they offer obituary drafting assistance. Many do, and it removes the pressure of writing from scratch during a terrible time. Then contact the newspaper directly—don't email, call—and confirm their current word limits, pricing, and submission deadlines. Paper policies change more often than people realize. Get the facts verified by family. Submit early. And don't feel guilty about asking for help with the wording. That's literally what funeral directors and newspaper staff are there for.
Get the Full Details
