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How to Cite Personal Communications in APA Style

When writing a research paper, you typically need to use many different sources in order to get all of the information that you need. Most people consider books, magazines, newspapers and journal articles to be the main sources of information to use for research papers. Another very important source to consider is personal communication. This is first-person contact between you and your source of information, consisting of things such as emails, letters and interviews.

Instructions

- 1
  Cite a personal communication when you have referenced interviews, letters, emails and other types of first-person communication in your research paper.
- 2
  Create the citation by writing the name of the person that you communicated with, the words "personal communication" and the date that the communication occurred. An example of how to cite this is
  
  "(I. Smith, personal communication, August 9, 2005)".
- 3
  Make sure not to include personal communication references on the works cited page, as this does not follow APA style guidelines.

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