What are Obituary and some examples

When a loved one dies, it is customary to inform their circle of acquaintances so that, if they see fit, they accompany the family in the hard moments of the farewell. This communication is normally done through obituaries.

However, due to their many similarities, obituaries can be confused with obituaries that are also published in the media.

What are they exactly? How are they different from obituaries? Where can you find examples? We see it below.

What is an obituary?

An obituary is an obituary section of a newspaper, a section that provides information about the deceased person. It is also the parish book in which the death and burial certificates of the parishioners are recorded.

Is an obituary the same as an obituary?

Both terms are often confused since they have several points in common, such as the fact that they are information related to the death of a person that appears in the media.

Obituaries are death notices that include information about the funeral. They are used to inform relatives, friends or acquaintances of the deceased about the loss so that they can accompany the family if they wish.

The obituary, on the other hand, informs about the death without necessarily giving details of the funeral, in texts that are used to review the person's trajectory and are generally not commissioned by the family. It is not an advertisement, but a journalistic text, so the length is also an obvious difference.

It is worth mentioning that both terms can be used as synonyms in some Latin American countries, which may explain the confusion.

Obituaries on social networks

Obituaries on social networks tend more to spontaneity and are usually presented as small tributes to that deceased loved one.

Someone in the family, by the mere desire to do so, can write a few words of affection that serve as a memory, and that will surely generate comments of condolences. A support that always helps to make the duel more bearable.

On many occasions, the relative or friend is the one who writes the obituary on their personal profile, on other occasions said obituary is published on the wall of the deceased person. In this way, the profile of the person who has left becomes a space for homage, an option that can be made official by carrying out the corresponding procedure. Facebook, for example, offers such a possibility.

Apart from the above, you should know that there are funeral homes that make their own profiles or the web available to families to report the death. In this way, the funeral agency gives news coverage to the event, and the family can share the post or tweet on their profiles.

Examples in newspapers

The main headers reserve obituary spaces for both obituaries and obituaries.

At the beginning of April, when the former Atletico de Madrid coach Radomir Antic died, El Pais dedicated an “in memoriam” (obituary) text to him entitled “Antic, the Kasparov of the benches”.

Like El Pais, the newspapers El Mundo, ABC, El Correo, El Confidencial and many others, frequently publish obituaries, both on paper and online. Another figure to whom texts have been dedicated lately has been the singer-songwriter Luis Eduardo Aute. El Confidencial, for example, headlined it "Luis Eduardo Aute dies, the great seducer and dissident of pop."

In short, the obituary is a text that is presented as a tribute, and that is generally not commissioned by the family, does not give details of the funeral and is quite long. Those are, then, the main differences with the obituary.