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 in Personal Source the way they sign their name, and type what it was in the Description box, like E-mail to the author or Letter to the author. Then pick the Communication Date. PERRLA builds the Works Cited entry and the in-text citation (Matthys) in the MLA format.
The form shows a note that personal communications don't appear on the reference page. That's the APA rule. In MLA, PERRLA builds a Works Cited entry for it. Fill in the description: left blank, the entry just says Personal communication, which doesn't tell your reader what kind of message it was.
Already named the person in your sentence? There's no page number to add, so PERRLA tells you MLA doesn't need a parenthetical citation there.
Not using PERRLA yet? Here is how to build the same works cited entry by hand.
The parts of the works cited entry
1. The sender
Start with the person who wrote or said it: last name, a comma, and first name, the way they sign it. Leave out titles and credentials like Dr., PhD, or RN.
Matthys, Christophe.
Two people who answered together share one entry: invert only the first name, then write and and the second name in normal order. Three or more: the first person, a comma, and et al.
Fourneau, Christelle, and Carine Renaux.
2. Description
A personal message has no title, so MLA uses a short description in its place: what it was and who received it. It's in plain type, with no italics and no quotation marks, and only the first word and names are capitalized. MLA spells e-mail with a hyphen.
E-mail to the authors.
The author means you, the writer of the paper. If the message went to someone else, name them: E-mail to Allison Jones. For other kinds, change the first word: Letter to the author, Text message to the author.
3. Date
Give the date the message was sent, or the day the conversation happened: day, month, and year. Abbreviate months longer than four letters (Jan., Feb., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec.). End with a period.
18 Jan. 2024.
Know only the month? Give the month and year (May 2025).
Examples
An e-mail from an expert
Graduate students who adapt a published questionnaire need the developer's permission, and it usually comes by e-mail. The authors of a 2026 Frontiers in Nutrition study got permission by e-mail to adapt the Short Nutrition Literacy Scale into Turkish from Christophe Matthys, one of its developers. Here's that e-mail as the study's authors would list it in MLA. In your own paper, a message sent to you is an E-mail to the author.
Works Cited
Matthys, Christophe. E-mail to the authors. 18 Jan. 2024.
- In-text citation(Matthys)
- Narrative citationAs Matthys confirmed in an e-mail, …
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 by e-mail. Christelle Fourneau and Carine Renaux answered together for France, so both names go in one entry and one in-text citation.
Works Cited
Fourneau, Christelle, and Carine Renaux. E-mail to the authors. 19 Feb. 2021.
- In-text citation(Fourneau and Renaux)
- Narrative citationAs Fourneau and Renaux explain, …
In-text citations
An MLA 9 in-text citation for a personal communication is the sender's last name. An e-mail or a conversation has no page numbers, so there's nothing else to add.
- One person: (Matthys)
- Two people: both last names joined by and: (Fourneau and Renaux)
- Three or more people: the first person and et al.
- Name in your sentence: no parentheses needed: Matthys gave permission to adapt the scale.
- Two messages from the same person: add each e-mail's subject line in quotation marks, in both the in-text citation and the Works Cited entry, so your reader can tell them apart.
Common mistakes
- Leaving the e-mail off the Works Cited pageMatthys, Christophe. E-mail to the authors. 18 Jan. 2024.Leaving it off is the APA rule. MLA 9 gives a personal communication its own Works Cited entry, so every in-text citation points to something.
- (C. Matthys, personal communication, January 18, 2024)(Matthys)That's APA. In MLA, the in-text citation is the last name alone, and the date goes in the Works Cited entry.
- Matthys, Christophe. E-mail to the authors.Matthys, Christophe. E-mail to the authors.A description isn't a title. It takes no italics and no quotation marks.
- Fourneau, Christelle, and Renaux, Carine.Fourneau, Christelle, and Carine Renaux.Only the first name in the entry is inverted. The second person's name stays in normal order.
- Matthys, Christophe. E-mail to the authors. January 18, 2024.Matthys, Christophe. E-mail to the authors. 18 Jan. 2024.MLA writes the day first, then the month, abbreviated when it's longer than four letters.
Quick checklist
- A Works Cited entry, not just an in-text citation
- Sender inverted, full first name, no titles or credentials
- A plain description: E-mail to the author, Letter to the author
- Date as day, month, year: 18 Jan. 2024
- In-text: the last name alone, or the name in your sentence
- Checked first that there's no published source you could cite instead
Questions students ask
Do personal communications go on the MLA Works Cited page?
Yes. Unlike APA, MLA 9 gives e-mails, letters, and text messages a Works Cited entry: the sender, a description like E-mail to the author, and the date. Your in-text citation then points to that entry with the sender's last name.
How do I cite an e-mail from my professor in MLA 9?
Your professor goes first, last name then first name, with no Dr. or Professor. Then write E-mail to the author and the date it was sent: Lastname, Firstname. E-mail to the author. 3 Mar. 2026. If the e-mail 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 text message or a conversation?
Use the same pattern and change the description: Text message to the author, or Conversation with the author. Give the date it was sent or the day you talked. In your text, cite the person's last name.
Is an interview I conducted a personal communication?
An interview gets its own kind of entry in MLA: the person you interviewed goes first, then a description in place of a title, like E-mail interview, then the date. In PERRLA, use the Interview reference type for it. A published interview in a magazine, podcast, or video is cited as that source.
What if I cite two e-mails from the same person?
Give each one its own Works Cited entry. The MLA Style Center suggests using each e-mail's subject line to tell them apart, in the description and in quotation marks in your in-text citation.
Is a ChatGPT conversation a personal communication?
No. There's no person on the other end, so MLA treats AI output as a source with no author. The entry describes what you asked as the title, then names ChatGPT, the version, OpenAI, the date, and the URL.
Related guides
Rules checked against the MLA Handbook (9th ed.), chapters 5 and 6 (the core elements, descriptions in place of titles, dates, and in-text citations), and the MLA Style Center posts on citing several e-mails sent the same day, styling descriptions for untitled course materials, and citing generative AI (updated 2025). Each example is a personal communication cited in a published, peer-reviewed article, verified against the article's full text in PubMed Central, including the methods line that says it came by e-mail. Christophe Matthys's full name verified on Crossref (the scale's 2023 development article).