Smallbone Library: Citing and Referencing (APA): Interviews, emails and personal communications

The information below relates to referencing interviews and personal communication according to APA and using footnotes. Be aware that the IB has particular guidance for interviews that supersedes APA.

IB students must make sure they refer to the "Documentation Checklist" (p.14) and "Elements to be Included in a Reference" (p.16-17) in Effective Citing and Referencing (IBO, 2020) throughout the writing process, and when proofreading their work. This supersedes any requirements of APA (but any major differences will be clearly noted in this LibGuide).

Personal Communication

Personal interviews (i.e. ones you conducted yourself that are not published anywhere), emails, letters and conversations (in person or virtual) must be cited in the text, but are not included in your bibliography. The bibliography ONLY includes sources that someone else could retrieve if they looked hard enough.

This means that you do not use the tools in Word to put these citations in - just type them.

For APA in-text citations, the format is: (A. N. Interviewee, personal communication, Month Day, Year)

For example, depending on the construction of your sentence:

D. De Vido (personal communication, October 28, 2017) or (D. De Vido, personal communication, October 28, 2017)

If you are using footnotes, you should include the place where the interview took place (if in person), using the format:

1. John Smith, interview by author, Amsterdam, September 19, 2019 or

2. Interview with a high school teacher, Chicago, March 15, 2021 - if the interviewee wishes to remain anonymous

Subsequent references to interviews can be simplified to:

3. Smith, interview.
4. Interview with a high school teacher.

Published Interviews

Citations of interviews that have been published in any type of source follow the format for the type of source in which they were published. The only difference from the usual formats is that the note and bibliography entry both begin with the name of the person being interviewed.

For example, for a journal article, the bibliography entry would look like this:

Coetzee, J. M. 1992. “An Interview with J. M. Coetzee.” Interview by Richard Begam. Contemporary Literature 33, no. 3 (Autumn): 419–431. https://doi.org/10.2307/1208476.