How long should a eulogy be? Three to five minutes. About 500 words.

Write to the low end of your slot, not the top of it. Nobody in the history of funerals has complained that a eulogy was too short. Plenty of people have watched someone lose the room at minute nine.

The table

• you are one of several speakers3 to 5 minutes. 390 to 650 words. This is the common case and the safest target. Assume two to four people will speak and that one of them will overrun; being the short one is a kindness.
• you are the only speaker7 to 10 minutes. 900 to 1,300 words. You are carrying the whole remembrance, so you get the room’s full attention for longer — but ten minutes is a ceiling, not a goal.
• the funeral director gave you a slotTake two minutes off it and write to that. Slots are optimistic. There will be a hymn that runs long and someone who cannot find the lectern.
• you are speaking at a wake or graveside, not the service1 to 2 minutes. 130 to 260 words. People are standing, often cold. One memory, one sentence about what it meant, done.

If you already have words on a page, do not count them by hand. Paste them into the page that times a eulogy and it gives you the minutes, the seconds, and how far over you are. It counts in your browser and keeps nothing.

Words per minute, corrected for grief

The usual figure quoted online is 150 words a minute. That is a confident person reading a business presentation. At a funeral you will speak more slowly than you ever have — you will pause where you did not plan to, you will stop to breathe, and if you cry you will lose ten to twenty seconds. Plan at 130 words a minute. If you time your own read-through and get 4 minutes, expect 4:30 on the day.

• 2 min260 words — about one page, double-spaced, 14pt
• 3 min390 words
• 4 min520 words
• 5 min650 words — the most common target
• 7 min910 words
• 10 min1,300 words — the absolute ceiling for one speaker

Time it out loud. Once. Standing up.

Reading in your head is roughly 40 per cent faster than reading aloud, which is how people end up two minutes over without knowing it. Stand up, read at the pace you would use in a church — slower than feels natural — and put a stopwatch on it. Do it once, tonight. Do not do it eleven times; rehearsing a eulogy into the ground is how you flatten it, and you want to still be able to hear the words on the day.

How to cut, when you are over

• cut the biography firstBorn in, moved to, married in, worked at, survived by. It is on the order of service and nobody is moved by a date. This alone usually recovers a minute.
• keep two stories, not fiveFive stories at 40 seconds each is a list. Two stories at 90 seconds each is a portrait. The room remembers the portrait.
• cut every adjective that could describe anyoneKind, generous, hard-working, always there. Replace one of them with the thing he actually did that made you say it, and delete the rest.
• cut your own apologies“I’m not good at this”, “bear with me”, “I wrote this at 2am”. Twenty seconds, and it asks the room to look after you at the moment you need them to listen.

The format on the page matters more than you think

Print it. 14 to 16 point, one and a half spacing, one paragraph per block, and never split a sentence across two pages — that is the single most common place people lose their footing. Number the pages. Put the last line of each page again at the top of the next. Do not hold a phone; the screen will lock, and your hands will shake more than you expect, which is far more visible on a phone than on paper.

• How long should a eulogy be?

  Three to five minutes — roughly 390 to 650 words — if other people are also speaking. Seven to ten minutes, or 900 to 1,300 words, if you are the only speaker. Write to the low end of your slot: nobody has ever complained that a eulogy was too short.

• How many words is a 5 minute eulogy?

  About 650 words. The common figure of 150 words per minute assumes a confident business delivery; at a funeral you will speak more slowly and pause more, so plan at roughly 130 words a minute.

• How do I know if my eulogy is too long?

  Time it out loud, standing up, at church pace. Reading in your head is about 40 per cent faster than reading aloud, which is how people end up two minutes over. If you are over, cut the biography first — dates and jobs are on the order of service — then reduce to two stories rather than five.