Someone has asked you to say a few words, or to write something, about a person who has died. It is an honour and it is daunting, usually in that order. This guide covers how to gather material, how to structure it, how long it should be, and how to get through reading it aloud.

Spoken and written are the same task

A eulogy delivered at a service and a written tribute published in a newspaper or on a memorial page are two forms of one thing: a short, honest account of a person, written by someone who knew them. Different languages have different words for each, and the conventions around length and formality vary. The underlying job does not.

The differences that matter are practical. A spoken tribute has to survive being read aloud by someone whose voice may not be steady, so short sentences win. A written one is read privately and can carry more detail, and it will be read again years later by people who were not there. A published notice may have a hard length limit; a memorial page has none.

Before you write: gathering material

Do not start with a blank page. Start by collecting, which is a much easier task and can be done badly without consequence.

Spend twenty minutes writing down everything that comes to mind, in any order: things the person said, habits, what they looked like doing the thing they most often did, jobs they held, places they lived, what they were proud of, what made them laugh, what they were like when they were annoyed. Include the unflattering things at this stage; you can cut them later, and they often point to what was true.

Then ask two or three other people the same question. Ask specifically — "what is the first thing you picture when you think of her?" produces something usable; "tell me about her" produces silence. Colleagues, neighbours and old friends will hand you a version of the person the family has never seen.

You will end up with far too much material. That is the correct state to be in.

A structure that works

Most good tributes follow roughly the same shape, and it is worth using rather than inventing one under pressure.

Open with something concrete. Not "we are gathered here today", but an image: what the person was doing when you picture them. One or two sentences.
Say who they were to you. Brief, and honest about the limits of your view — "I only knew her in the last ten years, but in those ten years..."
Give the outline of the life. Where they came from, what they did, the people who mattered. Facts, quickly. This is the part people forget to include and later wish they had.
Tell one story properly. One. A single well-told incident does more than five summarised ones, and it is the part everyone remembers afterwards.
Name the qualities the story demonstrates. Never before the story. "She was generous" is an assertion; the story is the evidence, and if you tell it well you barely need the word.
Acknowledge the loss plainly. One sentence. Do not resolve it or explain it away.
Close on the person, not on death. A last image, a thing they said, or something the listeners can carry out of the room.

If you have nothing else, that skeleton will carry you.

Finding the tone

The most common mistake is reverence. A tribute that describes a saint honours nobody, because the people listening knew a human being and will quietly stop believing you.

Warmth plus accuracy is the target. Humour is welcome if the person was funny; a laugh at a funeral is a relief, not a breach. Difficulty can be acknowledged without being dissected — "he was not always easy, and he would be the first to say so" is a sentence families are often grateful for, because it lets everyone stop pretending for a moment.

What does not belong: settling scores, family conflict, medical detail about the death, and anything that makes a person present feel accused. When in doubt, leave it out; the room is full of people who are not at their strongest.

Length and timing

For a spoken tribute, three to five minutes is the norm in most settings — roughly 400 to 700 words. Ten minutes is a long time to listen to at a funeral, and it is much longer to deliver than you expect.

Time it out loud, not in your head, and add a little: everyone reads more slowly on the day. If it runs long, cut whole sections rather than trimming words everywhere; the version that keeps one story fully told beats the version that keeps four stories half told.

For a published notice, check the length limit before you write. For a memorial page, there is no limit at all, which is its own trap — the longest version is not the best one, but it is a good place to put the material that did not fit elsewhere.

Writing for a memorial page

If the tribute is going onto a digital memorial page rather than being read at a service, a few things change in your favour.

You can include photographs beside the text, so you do not have to describe what a description cannot carry. You can add audio or video. You can publish a short version now and expand it in six months, when you can think again. And other people can add their own pieces alongside yours, which means you are no longer responsible for representing the whole person — you are contributing one view among many, which is both more accurate and far less pressure.

Practical guidance on setting one up is in What Is a Digital Memorial Page, and the memorial wall page shows what a finished one looks like.

Reading it aloud on the day

Assume you will not get through it cleanly, and prepare for that instead of hoping.

Print it in large type, double-spaced, on paper rather than a phone. Number the pages, and do not staple them. Mark two or three places where you can pause and breathe. Ask someone in advance to be your understudy, sitting nearby with a copy, ready to walk up and finish if you cannot — knowing that person exists is often what makes it possible to continue without them.

If you break down, stop and breathe. Nobody is judging you. The room is entirely on your side, and a pause of fifteen seconds feels endless to you and normal to everyone else. Drink some water. Then carry on.

Example openings and closings

Fictional, for shape rather than wording.

Openings

"The first thing I picture is Thomas in the doorway of that kitchen, arguing about football with someone who had come to fix the boiler." "Maria taught for thirty-one years. I was in her class for one of them, and I have been quoting her ever since."

Closings

"She would have hated all this fuss, and she would have come anyway, to make sure the coffee was strong enough." "We do not get any more time with him. What we do have is everything he already gave us, which turns out to be a great deal."

If you cannot do it

Say so, early. There is no shame in telling the family you are not able to speak, and it is far kinder than withdrawing on the day. Offer the alternative: write it and let someone else read it, or write it for the memorial page instead of the service. Both are complete contributions.

And if you are supporting someone who is doing the writing, What to Say to Someone Who Is Grieving covers the smaller, everyday version of the same problem.