The Journal · The Brantford Club

How to Write a Eulogy, and How to Read It Aloud

A eulogy is a short speech of praise for a person who has died, given at the funeral, the memorial, or the celebration of life by a relative or a close friend. The word comes from the Greek for praise. By custom it runs three to five minutes, opens with one specific moment, and is read from paper.

Somebody has died, the service is on Saturday, and the family has asked you to speak. This page is for the two days in between: what a eulogy is, how long it runs, where the material comes from, and how to read it aloud when your voice will not hold. It needs a notebook, three telephone calls, and a printed page.

What does eulogy mean?

A eulogy is a speech of praise for someone who has died, spoken in front of the people who knew them. The Cambridge Dictionary gives the word as “a speech, piece of writing, poem, etc. containing great praise, especially for someone who recently died or retired from work.” The retirement sense survives at a last working day’s dinner. Merriam-Webster traces it through Middle English euloge and Medieval Latin eulogium to the Greek eulogia, praise, from eu-, good, and -logia, speaking, and dates its first known English use to the fifteenth century. The root settles what the speech is for. An obituary lists the facts of a life for the record; a eulogy picks the person out of those facts and says, plainly, what they were like. Confuse the two and you get the eulogy that reads like a résumé.

Who Gives It, and How Long It Runs

By custom the eulogy is given by a family member or a close friend: a son or daughter, a sibling, a spouse if they can bear it, the friend of forty years. At a religious service the officiant may give a homily of their own, and the family’s eulogy sits beside it. Two or three people may speak; when they do, the total matters more than any one part, so agree the order and the total before Saturday. One person decides both, as a rehearsal dinner’s host orders toasts. Three to five minutes is the custom. A working rule for the desk: one page, double spaced, is about two minutes read aloud at the slow pace grief imposes. Four pages is nine minutes at the lectern, and the room feels every one. Two and a half pages at most, then read it with a watch.

Gathering It in Two Days

Start with a notebook, not a screen. Telephone three people who knew the person from three directions: a colleague, a neighbour, the friend from before you were born. Ask each for one story, and press for one detail inside it: what he was wearing, what she said, what was on the table. Write the detail down in their words. Three people, three stories, one detail each, gives you more than you will use, and the choosing is where the eulogy gets written. Then ask the family a single question: what should not go unsaid on Saturday? The answer is usually a sentence, and that sentence becomes the thread. Keep the notebook open for the two days; the lines that arrive while you are doing something else are the ones the room will remember. Do not ask anyone for achievements; those are in the obituary already. The house remembers its Steward Jack Ball for his steak and kidney pie.

The Shape of It

Open with a specific moment. A summary loses the room in its first sentence; a moment puts them in a kitchen at six in the morning, or beside a truck that would not start in February, and they are with you. From there, carry the thread: the one thing the family said should not go unsaid, returned to twice. Then tell the story that shows the person, the best of the three you gathered, with its detail intact and no moral attached; the room draws the moral itself. The ending is plain. Say their name, say one sentence about what they were like, and stop. There is no need to build to anything, and no need to say goodbye on the family’s behalf. The last line of a good eulogy is usually the shortest one in it.

Reading It Aloud

Print it. Fourteen-point type at least, double spaced, one side of the page. Mark the breaths with a slash, and put two slashes where you expect to break, because you will. Hold the paper in both hands; a page shaking a little is invisible from the third row. On the day, have a glass of water put at the lectern before people are seated, and give a copy to a second reader near the front who has agreed to finish it if you cannot; knowing they are there is usually what keeps you from needing them. The walk to the lectern is longer than it looks. Take it slowly, set the pages down, find one face, and begin. When the voice goes, and it goes for most people somewhere on the second page, stop. Drink. The room will wait as long as you need. Then read the next sentence, which is easier than the last one was. What the Journal says about the room in how to give a retirement speech holds here with more force: nobody should clear a plate or pour a drink while a eulogy is read, and the host should be asked for it in so many words.

At a Celebration of Life, in a Private Room

A celebration of life is usually held without the body present, often weeks later, and the eulogy at one is read over a table instead of from a pulpit. Families in Brantford book a private room for the reception after a service, and the eulogy comes once everyone is seated and the first course is down. The Brantford Club, at 98 George Street, keeps rooms for this: the Small Dining Room upstairs seats eight, and the Main Floor Dining Room takes up to sixty. For the speeches, the house quiets the room: service stops, the bar stops, the door stays shut, and nothing is cleared until the name has been said and the glass raised. The speaker stands at the head of the table, where every face is close; hold the paper anyway. The Brantford Club’s dining room asks for smart casual; what that means after a service is in the Journal’s guide to what to wear to a celebration of life. The room goes to the family that asks for it, member or otherwise. A deposit equal to the room fee holds the date, and a cake from outside may come in for a plating fee; the remaining terms are on the Club’s booking page.

Asked at the kitchen table, two nights out

Sources: the Cambridge Dictionary entry for eulogy and the word history under Merriam-Webster’s, both read in September 2026; The Brantford Club’s own hosting sheet for the room counts. Each room, with its count, is on the private dining page.