How to Cite a Lecture

Lectures are easy to cite once you answer one question: can your reader get to it? A recorded, publicly posted lecture is an ordinary online source. A live lecture nobody recorded is not recoverable, and every major style handles it differently for that reason.

Types of Lectures

• Recorded and publicly available: lectures on YouTube, TED talks, MOOC and OpenCourseWare videos.
• Recorded and access-restricted: course videos on an LMS that require a login.
• Unrecorded live lectures: class sessions you attended, with no recording.
• Conference presentations: delivered live, sometimes published in proceedings.

Recorded Public Lectures

APA treats these as videos, with the uploading account as the author.

APA's own published examples of the form:

APA's rules for this format: use the name of the account that uploaded the video as the author; give the specific upload date; italicize the title; add "[Video]" in square brackets; then the site name and URL. To quote someone speaking in the video, name them in your sentence and put the citation on the video.

A recorded course lecture published openly — verified against the course site:

That course is taught by Dr. Ana Bell, Prof. Eric Grimson and Prof. John Guttag, as its OpenCourseWare page states; name the speaker in your sentence when it matters who is talking.

MLA assembles the entry from its core elements — author, title of source, title of container, publication date, location:

Chicago (18th Edition) publishes this example of a recorded lecture, which shows how much detail its format carries:

The note form of the same source shortens to Oliver, "Why."

Course Lectures (Recorded, Access-Restricted)

For a recording posted on an LMS that requires a login, APA's classroom-material rule applies: give the name of the site or LMS and its URL, using the login-page URL for sites that require one — and only where you are writing for an audience with access to it. Its own published example of the pattern, for slides on a course site:

Adapted to a lecture recording:

APA adds the limit that matters: if your readers do not have access, cite it as a personal communication instead.

Unrecorded Live Lectures

A class lecture with no recording is a personal communication. APA's list of personal communications names "unrecorded classroom lectures" explicitly, alongside emails, phone calls, live speeches and unrecorded webinars, and the rule is categorical: "personal communications are not included in the reference list; they are cited in the text only."

APA also tells you what form to use — "Give the initial(s) and surname of the communicator, and provide as exact a date as possible" — and publishes both variants:

Filled in for a lecture you attended:

Chicago's rule is comparable: personal communications "are usually cited in the text or in a note only; they are rarely included in a bibliography." Its own published note example:

MLA's handling of unpublished speech is set out in the MLA Handbook (9th ed.) rather than on the free MLA Style Center, so check the Handbook or your library's MLA guide before building a works-cited entry for a lecture nobody can retrieve.

One more APA point worth keeping: "When communications are recoverable only in an archive (e.g., a presidential library), cite them as archival materials." If a lecture was recorded and deposited somewhere, it stops being a personal communication.

Lecture Slides and Handouts

APA's slide format, with its own published examples:

The rule: when the slides are online to anyone, give the hosting site and the URL. When they are on a classroom site or LMS, use the login-page URL, and only for readers with access. APA also adds a point that saves a lot of bad citations: "If the slides contain citations to information published elsewhere, and you want to cite that information as well, then it is best to find, read, and cite the original source yourself rather than citing the slides as a secondary source."

Conference Presentations

APA has a single format whether or not the talk reached proceedings:

APA's own published example:

APA's rules: the presenters are the authors; give the full dates of the conference; describe the presentation in square brackets — the description is flexible ("[Conference session]", "[Paper presentation]", "[Poster session]", "[Keynote address]"); give the conference name and location; add a link if a video exists. To cite only the abstract, put "abstract" in the bracketed description, as in APA's second example:

If the paper was published in proceedings, cite the published paper — that is the recoverable version, and your reader can read it.

TED Talks

APA gives TED talks two formats depending on where you watched.

From the TED website, with the speaker as author:

From YouTube, with the account as author:

Both are APA's own published examples, reproduced as APA prints them — which is why the second reads "Ted." APA's page styles the account name that way in the reference while writing "(TED, 2019)" in the matching in-text citation, and the account itself is TED. Take the account name from the platform, capitalised as the platform capitalises it.

Applied to a talk verified against the TED site — recorded at TED2022 in April 2022 and posted in September that year:

Chicago's Citation Quick Guide happens to use this same talk as its own example, and its bibliography entry adds the venue and a running time:

(Running times are worth taking off the platform rather than out of a style guide — and worth checking twice. TED's page carries two: its talk record gives 554 seconds, or 9 minutes 14 seconds, and the metadata its player uses gives 551. Chicago prints 9 min., 15 sec. If a duration is load-bearing for your argument, say which figure you took and where from.)

Guest Lectures

If the guest lecture was recorded and posted, cite the recording like any video. If it was not, it is a personal communication — and one where you should be careful about naming a private individual without their agreement:

What If You Can't Remember the Exact Date?

APA asks for "as exact a date as possible", which means give what you can support and no more:

• Exact date, if you have it in your notes.
• Month and year, if that is all you are sure of.
• A term or a week of a course, if that is all the record shows.

Don't fabricate precision. A wrong specific date is worse than a vague true one.

Citing What the Professor Said vs. What They Showed

• Citing something the instructor said: cite the lecture.
• Citing a source the instructor mentioned: find and cite that source. A mention is a lead, not a citation — and APA says as much about slides.
• Citing a slide with data on it: cite the original if the slide credits one; cite the slides if the instructor made the figure.

Multiple Lectures From One Course

Cite each lecture you rely on, with its own date. If you are drawing on a course as a whole rather than a specific session, say so in your prose instead of building a citation that points at nothing retrievable.

Where These Rules Come From

• APA: the "YouTube Video References", "TED Talk References", "PowerPoint Slide or Lecture Note References", "Conference Presentation References" and "Personal Communications" pages on the APA Style site (apastyle.apa.org), citing Publication Manual Sections 10.12, 10.14, 10.5 and 8.9. APA's site refuses automated requests, so these were read through Internet Archive captures (the personal-communications page from a capture dated 30 August 2026); every APA example and quoted sentence above comes from them.
• APA, corroborated: James Cook University Library's APA guide, "Videos (YouTube), Podcasts & Webinars" and "Personal Communication" (libguides.jcu.edu.au/apa/YouTube, .../apa/personal-communication), read live. JCU's video pattern is Author, A. A. [screen name if applicable]. (Date). Title [Video]. Platform. URL, with "Screen name. (Date). Title [Video]. URL" where no full name is given — so it corroborates putting the account name in the author position, though it frames the rule around the screen name rather than, as APA does, around the account that uploaded the video. The personal-communication page is the source of the retrievability test for what cannot go in a reference list.
• Chicago: the free Chicago Manual of Style 18th-edition Citation Quick Guide, "Video or podcast" (CMOS 14.167–69) and "Personal communication" (CMOS 14.111), read live — the Oliver, Cowan and Sam Gomez entries are quoted from it.
• MLA: the MLA Style Center's template of core elements (style.mla.org). MLA's treatment of unrecorded speech is in the MLA Handbook and is not reproduced free online, so this page does not assert one.
• The Cowan talk was checked against its TED page, whose metadata records it as recorded 10 April 2022, published 8 September 2022, duration 554 seconds (9 min 14 s), at TED2022. The MIT lecture was checked against its MIT OpenCourseWare page, which names the instructors as Dr. Ana Bell, Prof. Eric Grimson and Prof. John Guttag, and the course as taught in Fall 2016.