The category "Personal Communications" is used in situations where you are taking information from a private source, such as an email thread or an interview you conducted with someone. In these cases, the work isn't published anywhere and is not publicly available. You may find interviews or email excerpts published in other sources, such as magazines, newspapers, websites, etc. These should not be cited as "personal communications;" instead, cite the main source where you found the interview.
Interviews and emails are considered personal communications in APA style. Personal communications should receive in-text citations in the body of your paper or assignment, but should NOT appear in your Reference list. Put the in-text citation right after a quote or paraphrased content from the interview or email.
"Quote from interview goes here" (F. M. Lastname, personal communication, Month Date, Year).
"Infections are often contracted while patients are recovering in the hospital" (J. D. Black, personal communication, May 30, 2013).
Heads up! Unlike other types of personal communications, oral communications from Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers should be cited both in-text AND in the Reference list.
Last name, First initials (Elder), Nation/Community. Topic/subject of communication if applicable. Personal communication. Year, Month Date. Territory Acknowledgement of where information was shared/collected.
Lekeyten (Elder), Kwantlen First Nation. Community justice. Personal communication. 2019, April 4. Shared on the traditional unceded territory of the Kwantlen, Musqueam, Katzie, Semiahmoo, Tsawwassen, Qayqayt and Kwikwetlem Peoples.
APA does not have a format for citing Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers. This citation template was developed by Norquest College in the spirit of wahkôhtowin and reconciliation. It was expanded upon by Kwantlen Polytechnic University Library and the KPU Elder in Residence, Lekeyten.
Last Name, First Initial.
or
Last Name, First Initial. Middle Initial (if provided in source).
Anzaldúa, G.
Kendi, I. X.
Wallace, D. F.
Anzaldúa, G. (2012). Borderlands / la frontera: The new mestiza (4th ed.). Aunt Lute Books.
Last Name, A. A., & Last Name, B. B.
Wykes, M., & Gunter, B. (2005). The media and body image: If looks could kill. Sage.
Last Name, A. A., Last Name, B. B., & Last Name, C. C.
Nguyen, T., Carnevale, J. J., Scholer, A. A., Miele, D. B., & Fujita, K. (2019). Metamotivational knowledge of the role of high-level and low-level construal in goal-relevant task performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(5), 879-899. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000166
Last Name, A. A., Last Name, B. B., Last Name, C. C., Last Name, D. D., Last Name, E. E., Last Name, F. F., Last Name, G. G., ... Last Name, Z. Z.
Pegion, K., Kirtman, B. P., Becker, E., Collins, D. C., LaJoie, E., Burgman, R., Bell, R., DelSole, R., Min, D., Zhu, Y., Li, W., Sinsky, E., Guan, H., Gottschalck, J., Metzger, E. J., Barton, N. P., Achuthavarier, D., Marshak, J., Koster, R., . . . Kim, H. (2019). The subseasonal experiment (SubX): A multimodel subseasonal prediction experiment. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 100(10), 2043-2061. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-18-0270.1
If the group author and the publisher are different entities, list the Group Name as the author.
Calgary Educational Partnership Foundation. (1996). Employability skills: Creating my future. Nelson.
If the group author and the publisher are the same, follow the "No Author" rules instead.
If a source has no author, skip the author and start with the title. Do not use "Anonymous" as the author name unless the work is signed as "Anonymous."
"How to Teach Yourself Guitar." eHow, Demand Media, www.ehow.com/how_5298173_teach-yourself-guitar.html. Accessed 24 June 2016.
(Last Name, Year, p. Page Number)
(Anzaldúa, 2012, p. 30)
(Last Name & Last Name, Year, p. Page Number)
(Wykes & Gunter, 2012, p. 53)
(First Author's Last Name et al., Year, p. Page Number)
(Nguyen et al., 2019, p. 880)
(Group Name [Abbreviation if Any], Year, p. Page Number)
If a group author uses an abbreviation, you can introduce the abbreviation in brackets the first time you cite them; in subsequent citations, you can use only the abbreviation.
(Calgary Educational Partnership Foundation, 1996, p. 230)
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2019)
After the first citation: (CDC, 2019).
If your full citation for a group author starts with the title rather than the group's name, follow the "No Author" in-text citation rules instead.
(Title of Longer Work or "Title of Shorter Work," Year, p. Page Number)
(Fair Housing, 1985, p. 15)
("How to Teach," 2016)
Many sources only require a publication year. For sources that require more information, dates should be formatted like this: Year, Month Day. Sources might provide a full date, only a month and year, or sometimes a season (such as Spring 2021); include as much information as the source provides. Do not abbreviate any month names.
Example: 2021, October 17.
If there is no date, use "n.d." in place of the date.
Digital Object Identifiers, or DOIs, are unique numbers or hyperlinks assigned to some online resources, such as journal articles, to make them easier to find.
If a DOI is provided for a source, include it at the end of your citation after any page numbers. In your References list, you should always format a DOI as a URL beginning with "https://doi.org/" followed immediately by the DOI number.
Example: For DOI "10.5642/jhummath.20170120," the URL version would be: https://doi.org/10.5642/jhummath.20170120
If no DOI is provided but a permalink or stable link is present, you can use that instead.
If a source has no date, include the initials "n.d." (short for "no date") where you would normally put a date. If a source is missing any other information that you need for your citation, you can generally skip that element and move on to the next element in the citation.
Examples: Some sources don't have an author; in this case, we skip the author and start our citation with the title. Most academic journals are published in volumes and issues, but some only have volumes; in this case, we list the volume number and skip the issue number.
If you're not sure what type of source you're working with, don't worry! This is a very common challenge. Check out our page on Identifying Source Types.
References List: List multiple works by the same author in order of year of publication from earliest to latest. Usually, the year of publication will be enough to distinguish between sources. If the same author has published multiple sources within the same year, add letters to the end of the year and organize alphabetically to distinguish between them, e.g. 2019a, 2019b, 2019c.
In-Text Citations: Since in-text citations include the year of publication, no extra step is usually needed to distinguish between sources. If your full citation includes letters to distinguish between sources published in the same year, include the letters in your in-text citations as well.
You can separate multiple in-text citations with a semi-colon to cite multiple sources at the same time. List the in-text citations in the order you used them in your sentence or paragraph.
Example: (Bennett, 2015; Smith, 2014).
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
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Content is adapted from the CSUDH APA Citation Guide and the Columbia College (BC) APA Citation Guide. Icons courtesy of Icons8.