The Dash

Still in copyright, and unusually actively enforced — do not reproduce any part of it, including in a printed order of service, without a license from the author. Buy the license or choose something else.

Pieces still in copyright are listed by title and author only — we name them and tell you where to get them, but we do not reproduce the words. Public-domain text is printed in your script in full.

Linda Ellis’s own site is where she publishes The Dash, alongside her 2024 follow-up The Dash Between, which she licenses free for reciting live at funerals and memorials.

The speaker remembers a friend’s funeral and the dates carved on the stone, a birth year and a death year. What matters, the poem says, is neither date but the small dash between them, which stands for the whole life lived. It asks the listeners how they are spending their own dash: whether they slow down, notice what is real, show love and appreciation and are less quick to anger. It ends by asking whether, when your own life is read out, you would be proud of how you spent it.

Widely used and actively licensed. Get permission before you print a word of it. Read at a funeral or memorial service. Themes: the dash between the dates · how you spent your life · popular at memorials.

Memorials and celebration-of-life services, the death of someone who lived generously, and services where the family want the mourners to take something away. It suits religious and secular settings. Because it turns the focus to the living, a family wanting the service centered entirely on the person may prefer something else.

Often read after the eulogy, or as a reflection before the closing. The officiant or a friend reads it. It also works printed in a program, but only with a license.

Allow about a minute and a half at a ceremony pace of about 130 words a minute, from the reader’s first word to their last.

• Get permission before you print a word of it in an order of service or slideshow. The rights are actively enforced; reading it aloud is a different matter from reproducing it.
• The dash is the central image. Say the word clearly every time; it is easy for it to blur into the line around it.
• The closing question is for the room. Look up at the mourners for it rather than at the page.

All funeral readings →