During the Halloween season, I enjoy reading those fake tombstones with humorous sayings on them, like “I told you I was sick — Emma Goner” or “Died for not forwarding that email to 10 people.”
So, what better experiment for October than to write a few of our own? No tombstone required, just a pen and paper.
Choose a subject
You can memorialize fictional people (Emma Goner) or abstract ideas (like free time). Poking fun at yourself might be safest.
When memorializing yourself in advance, pick one part of your life and come up with an unlikely cause of death or activity to be remembered by.
Your goal is to get a chuckle out of a friend, family member, colleague, or at least yourself.
Write as many as you like. When you’ve got a couple fun options, proceed to polishing the tombstone.
Polish and refine it
Try to make your first pass sharper:
- Can you shorten it? (A tombstone doesn’t have a lot of real estate.)
- Can you add rhyme or alliteration so it sounds good?
- Does changing the word order make it funnier?
For example, my first pass at my em-dash epitaph was:
Here lies Anne — She perished while defending the em-dash
Clearly it doesn’t need either “she” or “while” as both are implied. (If you’re paying a stone cutter by the letter, this matters!) So now we have:
Here lies Anne — Perished defending the em-dash
I like the graveyard-ish feel of the word perish. But using “died” instead is shorter, and repeats the “d” starting sound in defending and dash.
Here lies Anne — Died defending the em-dash
The simplest one sounds pithiest. Messing around with words is fun.
What’s the benefit?
Writing an epitaph offers a low-stakes experiment in humor, even if writing about death stretches us.
Most of all, this exercise forces us to choose words with care—a valuable skill for our writing toolbox.
Related content (and merchandise!)
The em-dash defense was inspired by Ann Handley, who sells wonderful “Justice for em-dashes” and “team —” merchandise. Check out her store here. You might find a great holiday gift for the grammar nerd in your life!
If you’re inspired to stretch to an entire humorous obituary, check out the New York Times article on this trend here: Off-Beat Obituaries Honor Loss With Levity (and Brutal Honesty)
