Errors in a published obituary are painful — and they happen more often than you would expect. A misspelled name, a wrong birth year, or a missing family member is permanently visible and difficult to correct after publication. This checklist helps you catch the most common mistakes before the obituary goes to print.
Names: Legal and Preferred
Verify the full legal name of the deceased, including middle name if used. Confirm whether the family wants a nickname listed — and if so, in which format: parentheses (Jim), quotation marks, or as a separate line. Check the spelling of surnames carefully, especially hyphenated names or names with unusual spellings.
For each survivor listed, verify the spelling of their full name. Check married names for female relatives — confirm whether they go by a maiden name, married name, or hyphenated version. For children, confirm whether they use the family surname or a different one.
Dates
Confirm the full birth date: day, month, and year. Cross-check against a birth certificate, passport, or driver’s license if available. Birth years are the most common factual error in obituaries, particularly when the deceased was not forthcoming about their age.
Confirm the date of death against the death certificate or hospital documentation. Double-check the day of the week if you include it — a wrong day next to the correct date is a common proofreading error. Verify all dates in service details: visitation, funeral, burial.
Relationships and Titles
Read through every relationship listed — son, daughter, brother, sister, niece, nephew — and verify each one against your source list. It is easy to accidentally swap “brother” for “son” or “niece” for “daughter” when typing under stress.
Verify titles and designations: if a survivor is a reverend, doctor, or military officer and the family wants that included, confirm the correct form of address. Confirm military rank and branch spellings for veterans.
The Survivors and Predeceased Lists
Cross-check the survivors list against a complete family list drafted separately from the obituary. Ask at least one other family member to review it with you. This step catches omissions — a cousin who was close, a sibling who was accidentally left out — that are easy to miss when writing from memory.
Verify that no living person appears in the predeceased section and no deceased person appears in the survivors section. If there is any uncertainty about a relative’s status, omit them and note it for clarification.
Service Details and Contact Information
Confirm funeral home name and address are spelled correctly and the address is accurate. Confirm service date, day, and time — including AM/PM. Confirm cemetery name and city. Verify donation information: the charity name, website, and mailing address if included.
If you include a contact name for memorial information, confirm that person is willing to be listed and that their contact details are correct.
Final Read-Through Tips
Read the obituary aloud — slowly. Errors that your eye skips over often become audible when spoken. Then read it backward, sentence by sentence, to catch spelling and date errors separate from the narrative flow.
Ask one person outside the immediate family to read the draft. A fresh set of eyes catches errors that family members overlook. Allow at least 24 hours between writing and final review if time permits — distance helps catch mistakes.
Worth remembering: Errors in obituaries are painful and difficult to correct. Check each name spelling, verify every date against source documents, confirm the survivors and predeceased lists with another family member, and do a final read-aloud before submitting to publication.
Common questions
What should I do if I find an error after the obituary is published?
Contact the funeral home or newspaper as soon as possible. Most will publish a correction notice. Online obituaries on funeral home websites can usually be edited directly.
How long does the proofreading process usually take?
Plan for at least an hour if you do it carefully — including time to look up spellings and verify dates with source documents. Rushing this step is how most errors happen.
Who should do the final proofread?
The best final proofreader is someone who knew the deceased well enough to catch factual errors, but was not involved in writing the obituary — a close friend, a sibling, or an adult grandchild.
Should I proofread the obituary before submitting it to the funeral home?
Yes, and also ask the funeral home to send you a proof before it goes to print. Most do this automatically, but it is worth confirming. Review the proof carefully — it may differ from what you submitted.