UOW Harvard

• Personal communications include letters, emails, interviews etc
• Email addresses should never be cited without the permission of the owner of the address
• Put all the details of the email letter etc. in-text: Author (communicator) Year, format description, day month
• Unless expressly permitted to do so, you must not use work or text generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) tool. If you are permitted to use an AI tool for this purpose, you must include proper acknowledgement. Until formal guidelines are in place, please use the software and apps referencing and citing conventions to acknowledge such use of an AI tool.

Template

(Author’s last name Year received, pers. comm., Day Month)

• “pers. comm.” refers to personal communication

Examples

“This is correct to the best of knowledge” (Brown 2012, pers. comm., 3 July)

or

Professor Shickle (2008 pers. comm., 8 July) verified in an interview that the contents of the email were correct

Template

Author’s last name, Author’s initials Year published, format, Day Month.

Example

Personal communications can take a number of forms and are not normally available for consultation except under special circumstances. For this reason, they are not usually included in the reference list.

If a full citation is required, reference in the following way:

Brown, B 2012, email, 3 July.

Shickle, S 2008, interview, 24 November.