Does a personal communication go in the reference list?

Not in APA, Chicago or IEEE, because the reader has no way to look it up. MLA and Harvard (Cite Them Right) do include an entry. If your department uses a local version of Harvard, check it, since some versions follow the APA approach.

What is the APA format for a personal communication?

Give the person's initials and surname, the words personal communication, and the exact date: (T. Nguyen, personal communication, February 24, 2020). In a sentence, APA's own example is E.-M. Paradis (personal communication, August 8, 2019).

Is a lecture a personal communication?

If the lecture was not recorded and the slides are not available to your readers, APA treats what the lecturer said as a personal communication. If slides or a recording are posted where your readers can reach them, cite those instead.

Is a ChatGPT conversation a personal communication?

No. APA's guidance is that there is no person communicating, so chatbot output is cited with the AI company as author and the model as the title. See the guide to citing AI tools.

Do I need permission to cite someone's email?

Styles do not require it, but research ethics and courtesy do. Ask before quoting a private message by name. For anything sensitive, consider describing the source without naming the person.

How to Cite Personal Communication (Emails, Conversations, Messages)

Most citations help a reader find the source. A personal communication cannot be found: it exists in your inbox, your notes or your memory. Styles handle this in two ways. Some keep it out of the reference list and cite it only where it is used. Others list it anyway so that every source is accounted for.

What Counts as Personal Communication

Emails and letters sent to you
Text messages and private direct messages on social media
Phone and video calls
Face-to-face conversations
Interviews you conducted yourself
Live lectures and talks that were not recorded, and class material your readers cannot access
Private online groups and closed mailing lists

What does not count: anything a reader could retrieve. A public social media post, a recorded webinar, a newsletter with a public archive and a letter held in an archive each have their own citation format. See how to cite social media and how to cite a letter.

What to Collect

The person's full name, and their role if it explains why they are worth citing
The kind of communication (email, phone call, conversation)
The exact date
Their permission to be quoted

A personal communication is private by definition, so this guide does not invent correspondents. Each format is shown as a template with the parts to fill in set in square brackets, followed by the example that the style authority itself publishes.

Quick Reference by Major Style

APA (7th Edition)

In the text only. There is no reference-list entry.

Parenthetical: (T. Nguyen, personal communication, February 24, 2020)
Narrative: E.-M. Paradis (personal communication, August 8, 2019)

These are the two examples on APA's own personal communications page. Use initials as well as the surname, and give the date as exactly as you can. The same wording covers every medium; APA does not distinguish email from a phone call.

MLA (9th Edition)

MLA lists the communication in the works-cited list, with a description in place of a title.

Email: [Surname, First name]. E-mail to the author. [Day Mon. Year].
Email to someone else: [Surname, First name]. E-mail to [Recipient's name]. [Day Mon. Year].
Letter: [Surname, First name]. Letter to the author. [Day Mon. Year].
Text message: [Surname, First name]. Text message to the author. [Day Mon. Year].

In-text: ([Surname])

If you cite several emails from the same person, the MLA Style Center advises adding the subject line to tell them apart. Its own example: Yamada, Tatsuya. E-mail to Allison Jones with the subject line "Meeting." 15 Aug. 2023, 9:15 a.m. For a long exchange that you mention only in general terms, the Style Center says a sentence or an endnote describing it can replace the entry.

Chicago (18th Edition)

In a note or in the running text. Personal communications rarely appear in a bibliography.

Footnote, from the Chicago Manual's own example:

Sam Gomez, Facebook direct message to author, August 1, 2024.

Other media follow the same pattern:

[First name Surname], email message to author, [Month Day, Year].
[First name Surname], telephone conversation with author, [Month Day, Year].

In author-date style the same details go in the text, and there is no reference-list entry. You can also work them into a sentence: "In an email to the author on [date], [name] explained that ..."

Harvard (Cite Them Right)

Harvard gives the communication an entry in the reference list.

Sender Surname, Initial. (Year) Medium of communication to/with Recipient Name, Day Month.

University College Dublin Library's Harvard guide gives this example:

Scott, G. (2010) E-mail to John Bryce, 26 February.

In-text: (Scott, 2010), or in a sentence: In an email response, Scott (2010) ...

A conversation or a message in an app follows the same template, with the medium changed: [Surname, Initial.] ([Year]) Conversation with [Name], [Day Month].

Ask the sender's permission before you cite a private message, and keep a copy in case your tutor asks to see it.

IEEE

The IEEE Reference Guide calls these "private communications". Unlike APA, IEEE gives them a number in the reference list, but the entry is minimal.

[1] J. K. Author, private communication, Abbrev. Month, year.
[1] A. Harrison, private communication, May 1995.

The first line is the guide's basic format and the second is its own example.

In-text: [1]

Lectures, Class Notes and LMS Material

What your lecturer said in class is a personal communication in APA if nothing recoverable exists. If the slides or a recording are on a learning platform such as Canvas, Moodle or Blackboard, the answer depends on your audience:

Your readers are in the same course and can log in: cite the slides or recording, with the platform name and login URL.
Your readers cannot log in: APA says to treat the material as a personal communication.

Details and examples are in how to cite a PowerPoint or course material and how to cite a lecture.

Traditional Knowledge and Oral Traditions

APA 7 has a separate approach for the Traditional Knowledge or Oral Traditions of Indigenous Peoples. If the information came from a person and is not recorded, APA uses a variation of the personal communication format that gives the person's full name, their nation or community, where they live, and the date, so that the source is credited with more care than initials and a date allow. If the information has been recorded and readers can retrieve it (a video, a book, an interview transcript), APA says to cite that recording in the usual way. Section 8.9 of the Publication Manual also covers how to share your own experiences if you are an Indigenous person. Check your own institution's guidance as well; some universities publish templates for citing Elders and Knowledge Keepers.

When Not to Use a Personal Communication

When a published source exists. If the person has written the same thing in an article, cite the article. Readers can check it.
For facts anyone could verify elsewhere. A personal communication is for information that only that person can supply.
For your own research data. Interviews and survey responses you collected for your study are reported as data and not cited. See how to cite an interview.
For chatbot output. See how to cite AI tools.

Overuse is a problem of its own. A paper that leans on several unverifiable conversations gives the reader little they can check.

Common Mistakes

Adding a personal communication to an APA reference list
Giving only the year. APA, MLA and Chicago all want the exact date.
Leaving out the initials in APA: the citation needs (T. Nguyen, personal communication, ...), not the surname alone
Including someone's private email address or phone number in the citation
Citing a public post or a recorded talk as a personal communication
Quoting a private message without asking the sender

Sources for These Formats

APA Style, "Personal Communications" (apastyle.apa.org), and Publication Manual, 7th ed., sections 8.7 to 8.9
MLA Style Center, "Should I create an entry for an e-mail conversation?" and "How do I cite several e-mails sent on the same day to the same correspondent?" (style.mla.org)
The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th ed., Citation Quick Guide, "Personal Communication" (chicagomanualofstyle.org)
Pears and Shields, Cite Them Right; University College Dublin Library, Harvard style guide, "Email, interviews and personal communication"
IEEE Reference Guide, version 3.28.2025, section S, "Unpublished"

Full style rules: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE.

If an expert tells you about a finding, ask where it was published. Wonders searches 320M+ scholarly works, so you can usually replace a personal communication with a source your readers can check.