First, the easy way: PERRLA
There's nothing published to look up, so you add a personal communication by hand. Choose Personal Communication, enter the person's name the way they sign it, and enter the date of the email, call, or conversation. PERRLA writes the in-text citation in the APA format (initials, last name, the words personal communication, and the full date) and leaves it off your references page, which is exactly what APA 7 asks for.
Already named the person in your sentence? Tell PERRLA to leave the name out of the citation, and it prints just the parentheses: (personal communication, May 12, 2021). APA doesn't use the description box (for example, Email), so you can leave it blank. PERRLA's MLA and Turabian formats do use it.
Not using PERRLA yet? Here is how to build the same citation by hand.
The parts of the citation
1. The person's initials and last name
Give the first initial (and middle initial, if you know it) and the last name of the person who wrote or said it. The initials come before the last name, the reverse of how names look on a references page. Hyphenated first names keep the hyphen: Eve-Marie becomes E.-M.
C. Matthys
Leave out titles and credentials like Dr., PhD, RN, or BSN. Two people who answered together are joined with an ampersand (&) inside parentheses and with and in your sentence. With three or more, use the first person's name and et al.
2. The words personal communication
After a comma, write personal communication in lowercase, with no italics and no brackets. It's the same for every kind: an email, a text, a Teams message, a phone call, or a hallway conversation. You don't name the medium in the citation. If it matters, say so in your sentence ("In an email, C. Matthys confirmed . . .").
C. Matthys, personal communication,
3. The date
Give the date as exactly as you can: month, day, and year, with the month spelled out. For an email or a text, use the date it was sent. For a conversation or a call, use the day it happened.
January 18, 2024
If you only know the month, give the month and year (May 2025). Give the year alone only when that's truly all you know.
4. No reference entry
That's the whole citation. A personal communication has no entry on the references page, because nobody else can retrieve it. Everything your reader learns about the source is in this one citation.
(C. Matthys, personal communication, January 18, 2024)
Examples
An email from an expert
Graduate students who adapt a published questionnaire need the developer's permission, and it usually comes by email. The authors of a 2026 Frontiers in Nutrition study got permission to adapt the Short Nutrition Literacy Scale into Turkish from Christophe Matthys, one of its developers, and cited his email in the text of their article.
Cited in the text only. It never goes on your References page.
- Parenthetical citation(C. Matthys, personal communication, January 18, 2024)
- Narrative citationC. Matthys (personal communication, January 18, 2024)
A conversation with a nurse colleague
A 2025 International Nursing Review study of nursing care for refugees from Ukraine cites Ganna Rozumna, RN, BSN, a Ukrainian American nurse who gave feedback on the manuscript, on Ukrainian cultural beliefs about mental health and vaccines. Her credentials stay out of the citation.
Cited in the text only. It never goes on your References page.
- Parenthetical citation(G. Rozumna, personal communication, January 16, 2024)
- Narrative citationG. Rozumna (personal communication, January 16, 2024)
Two people answering together
A 2021 International Journal of Nursing Studies Advances study compared registered nurse titles and education rules across countries, and asked key informants in each country to check its data. Christelle Fourneau and Carine Renaux answered together for France, so both names go in one citation.
Cited in the text only. It never goes on your References page.
- Parenthetical citation(C. Fourneau & C. Renaux, personal communication, February 19, 2021)
- Narrative citationC. Fourneau and C. Renaux (personal communication, February 19, 2021)
A first-hand account from the person who was there
Dr. Gina Green chaired the committee first charged with drafting a code of ethics for behavior analysts. A 2025 Behavior Analysis in Practice history of the Behavior Analyst Certification Board's ethics codes cites her account of how that work began. When the person is the subject of your sentence, use the narrative form.
Cited in the text only. It never goes on your References page.
- Parenthetical citation(G. Green, personal communication, May 12, 2021)
- Narrative citationG. Green (personal communication, May 12, 2021)
When you only know the month
A 2026 Obesity Science & Practice article on obesity treatment pathways cites Pamela R. Rama, of the Baptist Health Cardiometabolic Clinic, on how Baptist Health built its employee weight-management program. The article dates the communication May 2025, with no day. When you can't pin down the exact day, give the month and year. In PERRLA, leave the day blank.
Cited in the text only. It never goes on your References page.
- Parenthetical citation(P. R. Rama, personal communication, May 2025)
- Narrative citationP. R. Rama (personal communication, May 2025)
In-text citations
A personal communication is the one APA 7 source that lives only in your text. The citation does the whole job: who, the words personal communication, and when.
- Parenthetical: (G. Rozumna, personal communication, January 16, 2024)
- Narrative: the initials and last name go in your sentence, the rest in parentheses right after: G. Green (personal communication, May 12, 2021) described how the first code was drafted.
- Two people: an ampersand inside parentheses, and in your sentence: (C. Fourneau & C. Renaux, personal communication, February 19, 2021) or C. Fourneau and C. Renaux (personal communication, February 19, 2021)
- Month and year only: (P. R. Rama, personal communication, May 2025)
- More than one in the same spot: separate them with semicolons inside one set of parentheses.
The initials matter. Without them, a reader can't tell your personal communication from a published work by someone with the same last name, and there's no reference entry to sort it out.
Common mistakes
- Putting the email on the references page(C. Matthys, personal communication, January 18, 2024), in the text onlyYour reader can't retrieve a personal email, so APA 7 gives it no reference entry. The in-text citation carries all the information.
- (Christophe Matthys, personal communication, January 18, 2024)(C. Matthys, personal communication, January 18, 2024)Use initials and the last name, not the full first name. (The one exception is Indigenous Traditional Knowledge, covered in the questions below.)
- (G. Rozumna, RN, BSN, personal communication, January 16, 2024)(G. Rozumna, personal communication, January 16, 2024)Credentials and titles like RN, BSN, PhD, or Dr. never go in an APA citation. If they matter to your point, mention them in your sentence.
- (Green, 2021)(G. Green, personal communication, May 12, 2021)An author-and-year citation tells your reader to look for a reference entry that isn't there. A personal communication needs the initials, the words personal communication, and the full date.
- Green (personal communication, May 12, 2021)G. Green (personal communication, May 12, 2021)The narrative form keeps the initials too. Only the parentheses move.
- (Participant 4, personal communication, March 3, 2025)Quote the participant directly, with no citationPeople you interviewed for your own research study are participants, not sources. APA 7 has you quote them directly, with no personal communication citation.
Quick checklist
- Cited in the text only, with nothing on the references page
- First initial (and middle initial, if known) before the last name
- No titles or credentials (Dr., PhD, RN)
- The words personal communication, lowercase, no italics
- The full date: Month Day, Year, or Month Year if that's all you have
- Checked first that there's no published source you could cite instead
Questions students ask
Do personal communications go on the APA references page?
No. Emails, texts, calls, conversations, and unrecorded interviews are cited in the text only, because your reader has no way to retrieve them. The in-text citation gives the person's initials and last name, the words personal communication, and the date.
How do I cite an email from my professor in APA 7?
Cite it in the text as a personal communication: your professor's initials and last name, the words personal communication, and the date the email was sent. Leave out Dr. and Professor. If the email points you to a published study or a course reading, cite that source instead, because your reader can look it up.
How do I cite a class lecture or something my instructor said?
If the lecture was recorded, or the slides are posted where your reader can reach them, cite the recording or the slides with a reference entry. If it was a live, unrecorded lecture, cite it as a personal communication. APA's advice is to cite the research the lecture was built on when you can, and save the personal communication for ideas that appear nowhere else.
Is an interview a personal communication?
It depends on the interview. One you did yourself (with a nurse manager for a class project, say) that wasn't recorded or published is a personal communication. A published interview in a magazine, podcast, or video gets a reference entry. And people you interviewed as participants in your own research study aren't cited as personal communications: you quote them directly.
Can I cite a text message, DM, or group chat?
Yes. Text messages, direct messages, online chats, and messages in groups that aren't archived are all personal communications, cited in the text with the sender's initials, last name, and the date. A livestream that wasn't saved counts too. If it was saved and posted (to YouTube, for example), cite the recording instead.
Is a ChatGPT conversation a personal communication?
No. APA Style's guidance is that a chat with ChatGPT has no person on the other end, so it's the output of an algorithm, not a communication. It gets a reference entry with OpenAI as the author. APA's AI chat format gives the date of the chat, the chat's title, the words Generative AI chat in brackets, the tool's name, and the chat's share link.
How do I cite Traditional Knowledge from an Indigenous person I spoke with?
APA 7 uses a fuller version of the personal communication for this. Give the person's full name, their nation or Indigenous group, and their location or other relevant details, then the words personal communication and the date you spoke. If you talked over a stretch of time, a more general date or a range of dates is fine. Make sure the person agrees to be named and confirms that what you share is accurate and appropriate to share.
Related guides
Rules checked against the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.), Sections 8.9 and 8.17, and the APA Style website's personal communications page, its ChatGPT guidance, and its AI references page. Each example is a personal communication cited in a published, peer-reviewed article, verified against the article's full text in PubMed Central.