The speech is written. Now there is the walk to the front, and the paper in your hand.

You have four days of writing advice and no advice about paper, hands, breath or where to point your eyes. That is the part that happens on Saturday.

The paper

• print it, on paper, at 18 pointNot a phone. Phones dim, lock, and shake visibly. Not a folded sheet from your pocket, which unfolds loudly. Flat sheets, 18 point or larger, single sided, printed on both a home printer and, if you can, one spare copy left in the car.
• double space itYour eyes are going to be unreliable. Double spacing is what lets you find your line again after you look up, and it costs nothing except a second sheet.
• never break a sentence across two pagesEnd every page on a full stop. Turning a page mid sentence is where the voice goes flat.
• number the pages, big, top rightIf you drop them, and people do, you want to be able to reorder them in 4 seconds without reading a word.

Mark it before you leave the house

Take a pen to the printed copy. Three marks, nothing more complicated, and they do most of the work of delivery for you.

• a slash for breathOne / wherever you must take a breath. Put more of them in than feels necessary, because under adrenaline you will breathe less, speak faster, and run out of air mid clause.
• a box round the two hard linesYou already know the two places you are likely to go. Box them. Seeing the box 10 seconds early is what gives you time to slow down before you arrive.
• an underline where you look upThree or four places, no more. Look up at the end of a sentence, never in the middle. Underline the last three words so you know where to come back to.

Read it out loud, standing, twice. Not silently at the table.

The pace

A calm reading is about 130 words a minute. Adrenaline pushes people to 170, and at 170 nothing lands and you will be finished in 2 minutes wondering what happened.

So practise it standing up, out loud, twice, with a timer running. Silent reading at the kitchen table tells you nothing about the speed of your own mouth. If your two run-throughs differ by more than 30 seconds, the speech is not in your body yet.

One trick that works on the day: say the first sentence slower than sounds natural. The room reads that as composure, and your own pace settles to it.

The microphone and the lectern

• a fixed mic wants a hand’s widthAbout 20 centimetres from your mouth, angled up. Closer than that and every breath is audible. Do not adjust it while speaking.
• ask the funeral director for 30 seconds beforehandThey do this every week and will happily show you the mic, the step, and where the lectern light is. Ask when you arrive, not at the door of the chapel.
• if there is no mic, aim at the back wallNot at the front row. Speaking to the back wall is what makes a small room hear you without shouting.
• put both feet down and both hands on the paperWeight even, paper on the lectern rather than held up. Held paper shakes; paper on wood does not, and no one in the room can see your hands.

Where to look

Not at his widow. Not at your mother. Find one person three or four rows back who is not immediate family, and read the difficult parts to him. Come back to the front row for the last line only, when you have nothing left to get through.

The plan for the moment it goes wrong

• your voice goesStop. Put a hand flat on the lectern. Take one breath in through the nose and out slowly. The room will wait, and it does not mind — every person there expects this and half of them could not do it at all. There is more on this in how to get through it without breaking down.
• you lose your placeSay nothing while you find it. Silence reads as a pause. Narrating it does not.
• you cannot go onDecide today who your reserve is. Hand them the second copy before the service, tell them where you are likely to stop, and say the sentence out loud once: if I stop, take it from the box.
• you finishDo not walk off. Stand for two seconds, look up once, then go back to your seat. The two seconds are what tell the room the speech has landed.

Water on the lectern, not in your hand. Phone off, not on silent. And take the printed copy home afterwards, because his grandchildren will want it in 20 years and nobody ever keeps it.

One more thing nobody warns you about: there is a second, much shorter moment about 40 minutes later, outside, where the family is often invited to say something at the grave. It needs one sentence and no paper. What to say at a graveside or a committal has the lines.

• How do you deliver a eulogy without your voice shaking?

  Put the paper flat on the lectern rather than holding it, stand with your weight even on both feet, and say the first sentence slower than feels natural. Mark the script with a slash everywhere you need a breath, because under adrenaline you breathe less and run out of air mid sentence. Practise standing up and out loud twice, not silently at the table.

• Should I read a eulogy from paper or memorise it?

  Read it from paper. Nobody expects a memorised speech at a funeral, and memorising removes the one thing that gets people through the hard part. Print it single sided at 18 point, double spaced, never breaking a sentence across a page, with the pages numbered large in the top corner.

• How fast should you read a eulogy?

  About 130 words a minute, which is slower than ordinary conversation. Adrenaline pushes most people to about 170, where the words stop landing. Time two standing run-throughs; if they differ by more than 30 seconds, read it aloud twice more before the day.

• Where should you look while giving a eulogy?

  At one person three or four rows back who is not immediate family, for the difficult parts. Looking at his widow or your own mother is what starts most people crying. Look up only at the end of sentences, three or four times in the whole speech, and return to the front row only for the last line.