Webb Funeral Obituaries Honoring Legacies Navigating Grief With Dignity

Writing Obituaries at Webb: What Actually Works

Most people have no idea how to write an obituary until they're sitting at their kitchen table at 11pm with a blank document and a phone buzzing with people asking if it's ready. I've watched this play out enough times to know the common mistakes before they happen. The process at Webb Funeral is fairly standard across most funeral homes, but there are details that matter more than most people realize when you're trying to do it right. The basic framework for a proper obituary runs about 300 to 600 words for a standard newspaper publication. Webb will publish your draft in their online memorial section free of charge, and they can also submit it to local newspapers if you want that reach. Here's what happens in practice when you work with them: you provide the information, they format it, and you get a proof back within a few hours. The whole thing usually takes about 20 minutes of your time if you have the facts organized beforehand. The facts you need are straightforward but easy to forget under stress. Full legal name including any middle names or initials. Date and place of birth. Date and place of death. Names of surviving family members — spouse, children, grandchildren, parents if applicable. Predeceased relatives if you want them listed. Place of employment or occupation. Military service details if relevant. Religious affiliations or organizational memberships that mattered to the person. Service details: date, time, location of visitation and the actual memorial or burial service. Where memorial donations can be sent instead of flowers.

I learned early on that the biggest mistake people make is not deciding on the tone before they start writing. A 91-year-old who lived a full life gets treated differently in the writing than someone who died at 34. The obituary should match how the person actually lived. My go-to workaround when families can't agree on tone is to ask them to describe the deceased in three words they'd hear from a close friend, then build the piece around those words. It cuts argument time from an hour down to fifteen minutes and usually lands somewhere everyone can accept. There's a counter-intuitive thing about obituary length that most people get backwards. Shorter isn't always better, and longer isn't automatically worse. The problem is that newspapers charge by the line or by the inch, and Webb will give you a layout proof showing exactly how many lines your text will occupy. A 400-word obituary might run two pages in the Sunday paper depending on column width. Budget matters here more than sentiment. If you're working with a tight print budget, aim for 250 to 350 words and put the fuller biography on Webb's online memorial page where there's no length limit and no extra cost. Another detail people consistently overlook is the Survived By vs. Predeceased By section. If someone had five siblings and two predeceased them, listing all seven by name with their spouses and children creates a massive wall of text. The standard convention is to list living immediate family in full and summarize extended family. Something like "survived by his wife Margaret, his children David and Susan, and four grandchildren" is cleaner and easier to read than trying to name every person. For the predeceased, "preceded in death by his wife Eleanor, his parents Robert and Mary, and his brother James" covers the essential information without turning the obituary into a family tree.

Here's something most funeral homes won't volunteer: you can absolutely write and submit an obituary yourself without using their preparation service, and Webb will still publish it. The catch is that if there are errors in the submitted version, corrections after publication often incur additional fees from the newspaper. Doing it through their team means they catch most issues before it goes to print, which saves money if anything is wrong. But if you're confident in your writing and have someone else review it, self-preparation is perfectly valid and costs nothing extra. The online memorial page is where most people actually see the obituary now. Newspaper circulation has dropped significantly across the country, and the Web-based memorial at webbfuneral.com gets far more views than the printed version. This is worth keeping in mind when deciding how much to invest in the print edition versus the online one. The online page also allows for photo galleries, video tributes, and visitor comments, which can be meaningful for families who want a more interactive space. A timeline note: you should submit the obituary to Webb within 24 to 48 hours of death. They typically need it at least 24 hours before the service if you want it published before the funeral, and some newspapers require even more lead time for Sunday editions. Rush fees apply if you miss those windows, usually adding 25 to 50 percent to the print cost. Planning ahead avoids that entirely.

If the deceased had a particularly distinctive career, hobby, or life story that doesn't fit neatly into the standard obituary format, consider writing a separate tribute article. This can be posted on the online memorial page without restrictions on length or content. A retired engineer who spent forty years building bridges could have a short obituary for the newspaper and a three-page biography on the web page. Both serve different purposes and reach different audiences. Common pitfalls I've seen repeatedly: misspelled family member names, incorrect dates (especially confusing month and day formats like 5/7 vs 7/5 depending on which system you grew up with), listing an address for the service when only the venue name is needed, and forgetting to mention the requested charity for donations until after publication when people have already sent flowers. Double-check everything against official documents before you hit submit. A single error in a printed obituary is permanent and visible to everyone who reads the paper. The emotional weight of this task is real and shouldn't be minimized. Writing about someone you've lost is harder than it looks, and the last thing you need is a complicated process making it worse. Webb's staff is generally experienced in this and can guide you through decisions if you ask. Don't hesitate to request their help with wording, structure, or anything else. It's part of what you're paying for beyond just the publication.