Online Learning Support

Personal communications are messages that readers can not recover and include: 

It is always better to use a recoverable source if there is one available. For example, you may be citing a research study that you heard about through a professor's lecture. If the original study is published and available, it's better to use that as the source. If the information is not available in some fixed medium (print, video, etc.) it is correct to cite it as a personal communication.

Follow these tips for citing personal communications:

• Use only when source is not recoverable
• Cite in-text only
• Do not include in reference list
• Use the author's first initial followed by a period and their last name
• Use the descriptive phrase personal communication
• Follow up with the date

When citing a personal communication in the body of your paper you can use either a narrative citation or signal phrase, like in the first example below, or a parenthetical reference like the second example. In the first example the descriptive phrase personal communication precedes the date in parentheses after the name. In the second example the name, the descriptive phrase and the date are included in the parentheses. Notice that unlike other citations, we include the complete date instead of just the year.

Incomplete Name

What if the person you interview does not want to provide their complete name? According to the APA Style Facebook page, if you include a paraphrase or quotation in the text, you should explain how the communication happened or that the individual did not wish to be fully identified.