Format personal and published interviews correctly in APA 7th edition and MLA 9th edition. This tool handles both unpublished interviews you conducted and published or broadcast interviews.
Interview Type
(Initial(s). Surname, personal communication, Month Date, Year). Only published or broadcast interviews should appear in your reference list.
Interview citations vary depending on whether the interview is published or unpublished. The key distinction is accessibility and retrievability: if someone else could find and read the interview, it belongs in your reference list; if only you have access to it (like an email exchange or phone conversation you recorded), it's a personal communication.
In APA 7th edition: Personal communications and unpublished interviews are never included in the reference list because readers cannot access them independently. They appear only in parenthetical or narrative in-text citations with the date, names, and "personal communication" label.
In MLA 9th edition: Personal interviews are cited with the interviewee's name, "Personal interview," and the date. Published interviews are treated as works within a larger container (a podcast, journal, website, etc.) and receive a full citation in the Works Cited list.
| Type | Example | In Reference List? |
|---|---|---|
| Personal / Unpublished | You conduct a phone interview with a local business owner | APA: No / MLA: Yes (if you conducted it) |
| Published Interview | An article in The New York Times featuring an interview | APA: Yes / MLA: Yes |
| Broadcast Interview | An NPR podcast episode with an interview segment | APA: Yes / MLA: Yes |
You conducted a 20-minute phone interview with Dr. Maria González on August 10, 2024.
Note: In your reference list, you would omit this entirely. Personal communications cannot be included because readers cannot independently access them.
A published interview with a company CEO in a business magazine.
Same scenario: you interviewed Dr. Maria González on August 10, 2024.
An interview with a novelist published on a literary magazine's website.
No. In APA 7th edition, personal communications (including unpublished interviews you conducted) are never added to the reference list. They appear only in in-text citations as personal communication citations. This is because readers cannot independently access a private email, phone call, or personal interview you conducted. Published interviews, however, do appear in the reference list because they are retrievable by others.
Cite an email interview the same way you would cite any personal communication in APA 7: in-text only, using (Initial(s). Surname, personal communication, Month Date, Year). Do not include it in your reference list. The medium (email, in this case) is not specified in the citation itself; it is understood as personal communication.
In MLA 9th edition, cite it as: Last name, First name. Personal interview. Date in the format Day Month Year. For example: Smith, John. Personal interview. 15 Aug. 2024. This entry should appear in your Works Cited list.
APA 7: Format the interview as you would the container (article, podcast, video, etc.). For instance, an interview published in a journal uses the journal article format with the interviewee and interviewer names in the author field as applicable.
MLA 9: Use the format: Interviewee Last, First. "Title of Interview." Container Name, Date, URL. List it in Works Cited just as you would any other source.
APA 7: For personal communications, the medium is not part of the standard citation format. However, you may add it in parentheses in your text if it is crucial to understanding the source's credibility or context.
MLA 9: The medium can be included if it is significant to the reader's understanding. For instance, you might note "email interview" if that detail matters to your argument, but it is not required by the standard format.
APA 7th edition: The official resource is the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed., 2020), and free guidance is available at APA Style (apastyle.apa.org).
MLA 9th edition: The official resource is the MLA Handbook (9th ed., 2021), and free guidance is available at the Modern Language Association website (mla.org). Purdue OWL also maintains current and authoritative guides for both styles.
Learn more about citation styles and research writing: