Obituary style and rules

New Hampshire Union Leader obituary style and rules

Effective May 1, 2008

The importance of obituaries

The New Hampshire Union Leader and UnionLeader.com understand the importance of obituaries to families and to funeral homes. Few stories are as carefully read. Every one becomes part of a family’s history.

This newspaper’s procedures for accepting and editing obituaries and family notices are detailed below.

Submission of obituaries

The obituary deadline is now 6:30 p.m. Sunday through Friday for the Union Leader and 5 p.m. on Saturday for the Sunday News.

All obituaries should be e-mailed to obits@unionleader.com. Typed, double-spaced obits should be hand-delivered or faxed to (603) 668-0382 only when absolutely necessary.

Funeral homes should always call our obituary editor at (800) 562-8218 to make sure an obituary has been received.

Several ways to remember a loved one

Standard obituaries run in all statewide editions, our electronic edition and on UnionLeader.com through our association with Legacy.com. A standard obituary includes basic details on a person’s birth and death and a listing of close relatives. It also includes up to 100 additional words describing the person’s life, and details on calling hours and funeral services or memorial donations. The charge is $75. A photo may be included at an additional charge of $50.

For families who wish to add details of their loved one’s professional accomplishments, to remember close friends or additional relatives by name, or to give additional description of something special about the deceased, two options are available.

The first option is an expanded obituary.

In any obituary, additional information about the deceased may be included at a charge of $40 per column inch. This section will be preceded by the heading IN HIS LIFE or IN HER LIFE.

As an example, information such as this might be used: IN HIS LIFE: Few times were more special to Mr. Smith than the days he spent fishing last summer on Cabbage Pond in West Springfield with his daughter’s grandsons, Marc, Billy and Connor. “Grampy Earl” took great pride in teaching them the best ways to catch smallmouth bass.

Brief details on calling hours and funeral arrangements – preceded by the word SERVICES – are added to the end of most obituaries. In summary:

Basic Obituary Package ... $75
Package includes:
Services
Legacy.com

Add-on:
In His/Her Life ... $40/inch
2nd Day ... $40/inch
Picture ... $50

In all free or expanded obituaries, personal information and details on services are edited for grammar and to conform to the newspaper's standard style. No service or funeral home information is included in a free obituary.

The other option is a paid family notice.

Some families know exactly what they want an obituary to say, and they are not comfortable if their words are rewritten to fit a newspaper’s standard format. This option may meet their needs.

A family notice is an advertisement and is published just as a family wishes, as long as it is in good taste. Family notices are edited only to correct inaccuracies.

A family notice costs $40 per inch, is not limited in length and may include photos.

Family notices are handled by the Union Leader’s advertising department. To place a family notice, call (603) 668-4321 x264 before 5 p.m. on weekdays. If this is not possible, call the obituary editor as soon as possible at (603) 668-4321. The obituary editor may be reached after 4 p.m.

Obituaries run just once in full. Many families choose to publish a brief second-day notice repeating key funeral information from an obituary or family notice for $40 per column inch.

All obituaries and family notices are included in the newspaper’s listings of deaths, in our archives, in our electronic edition and on UnionLeader.com in partnership with Legacy.com.

Content rules and editing guidelines

The good working relationships between this newspaper and the state’s funeral homes will be reinforced if these content and editing rules are applied consistently. The rules are based on a simple standard: Consistency and fairness are important.

In special circumstances, editors do have the authority to adjust these rules.

Obituaries

Most standard obituaries have one-column, name-only headlines. A larger headline may be appropriate for a person of statewide prominence or whose death is reported on a news page in that edition.

If a person is far more identifiable by a nickname than a given name, that informal name may be used in the headline at an editor’s discretion.

Datelines usually identify the town or city where the deceased resided. However, upon request, the dateline can reflect a person’s address before admission to a nursing home elsewhere.

When New Hampshire or another state has been identified by the dateline, the state will not be named again unless necessary to avoid confusion.

The “body” of a standard obituary is normally limited to 100 words. If a funeral home submits an obituary of greater length, the obituary editor will condense the text. If a person was of special statewide or local prominence, an editor may allow the obituary to exceed that length if newsworthy information would otherwise be omitted.

The lead paragraph of every obituary should include the following:

Name and age – Full given name, nickname in quotes if applicable, middle name or initial, maiden name in parentheses if applicable, last name, age. Editors should include a military title if requested, even for those long retired.

Address – Last address or address before admission to health care facility, followed by date and place of death.

Cause of death – If included, this can be general or specific according to the wishes of the family and funeral home – “after a long illness” or “after a long battle with lung cancer” – but under no circumstance will inaccurate information be printed.

The second paragraph should include the deceased’s date and place of birth. It may include parents’ names, whether alive or not.The next paragraphs – which are limited to 100 words in total – must be edited tightly to describe the most memorable aspects of a person’s life in succinct fashion.

This section of an obituary will often include schools, jobs, military service, places of residence, affiliations and volunteer activities, or retirement information. When possible, events or accomplishments should be listed in chronological order.

A brief personal description of the deceased may be included in this section. This would be something beyond the usual “resume” described above. If the details are in good taste, these sentences can include nearly anything a family wishes. “Mr. Smith was an expert at tying trout flies.” “Miss Chagnon spent countless hours visiting shut-ins and volunteering at the Rochester soup kitchen.” “No one made fish chowder quite like ‘Grammie Kay,’ as she was known to her whole neighborhood.”

In the final paragraphs of a standard obituary, immediate family members should be identified. (These paragraphs are not included in the 100-word limit.)

Surviving family members should be identified in the following order: spouse; children; grandchildren and great-grandchildren; parents; grandparents; siblings; aunts and uncles; cousins; nieces and nephews; common-law spouse, fiance or fiancee, or other companion. Include military titles if available.

Only the following family members are to be identified by first and last name and hometown: spouse; children; parents; grandparents; siblings; common-law spouse, fiance or fiancee, or other companion. (An exception may be made to this rule when the family is very small, when no immediate family members are living; or when an extended family member or friend was a dependent or the primary caregiver.)

Stepchildren, stepparents and stepsiblings should be fully identified and listed immediately after full children, parents or siblings.Deceased spouses and children may be named in this section. Other deceased relatives may not.

Ex-spouses should be listed in a separate paragraph if the family so wishes.

Women will be listed as Mrs. John (Mary) Smith only if the funeral home indicates that style is preferred. Otherwise, in-laws are not listed in a standard obituary.

A small image of an American flag will be added to the obituary of any veteran of the U.S. military at no charge.

Photos

Photos of the deceased will be used with obituaries at a charge of $50. Photos that will not print in acceptable quality when cropped into a head-and-shoulders format cannot be used.

Digital images should be emailed to obits@unionleader.com as a 5x7 jpeg file at 200 dpi. If a family wants a “hard-copy” photo to be returned, please include a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

Services

Services and related information should be listed in chronological order. This may include calling hours, a memorial service or funeral, perhaps with a procession, burial, memorial donations, and the name of the funeral home involved. If there are no calling hours or public services, it is best to say so.

Memorial donations must be directed to an institution with financial accountability such as a bank, church or charity. Donations cannot be directed to a family member unless through a trustee such as an attorney, trust fund or scholarship fund.

Many funeral homes offer online services such as memorial books, forms for condolence messages, maps, and so forth. All such references will be standardized as follows: “For more information, go to simpaticofuneralhome.com.”

Second-day notices

Second-day notices allow the concise republication of key funeral information from an earlier day’s standard obituary or family notice. These notices begin with the name of the deceased (in capital letters), age, address, date of death and services information.

A second-day notice carries a charge of $40 per column inch.

Occasionally, a second-day notice may include new information that was unavailable or omitted from the initial obituary. Editors must use careful judgment in approving this option. It can be appropriate in many cases instead of a correction, but it should not be used to avoid drawing attention to a significant error, whether by a funeral home or the newspaper.

“NH Deaths” listings

The daily and weekly “NH Deaths” listings include the following information: name (with maiden name in parentheses if available), age, address, date of death. Omit most nicknames. Items are alphabetized by dateline, then by last name within the same town. The out-of-state section is alphabetized by last name and should include an extremely brief reference to a New Hampshire connection, if known. There is no charge for this listing.

Corrections

No newspaper blunder is more certain to upset someone than a mistake, even if minor, in a loved one’s obituary.

Unless an error made it difficult for readers to identify the deceased, no standard obituary will run twice in full. However, a corrected version of a flawed obituary will be mailed promptly if requested by any immediate family member or the funeral home.

All obituary corrections will run at the bottom of that page. Henceforth, obituary corrections will be headlined with the name of the deceased. The text will begin with the capitalized word CORRECTION. All corrections will be as brief as possible. Corrections will not identify the party at fault, whether it be the newspaper or the funeral home.

Style advice to editors and funeral homes

Be concise and avoid redundancy. Space is always at a premium, and some obituaries are vastly overwritten.

Be concise in listing achievements and activities. Keep listings of offices and honors brief. Summarize major accomplishments. Don’t say: “After four years, she graduated from the University of New Hampshire’s Durham campus, Class of 1966, with a bachelor’s degree in European history.” Say: “She was a 1966 University of New Hampshire graduate.”

Note that the unneeded word “the” should generally be omitted when identifying organizations such as “the Exeter Hospital and the Simpatico Funeral Home.”

Comments on our obituary policies are welcome

The Union Leader’s editors continually review this policy. The concerns of families and funeral directors have helped guide past changes.If you have suggestions on how we can better serve readers, families and funeral homes, please contact Edward C. Domaingue II, the newspaper’s vice president for news, at edomaingue@unionleader.com or at (603) 668-4321 x302.