How to Do APA Format for a Chat Session

A chat session is considered a personal communication in American Psychological Association style, as is email or other online discussions. Generally speaking, a chat session, while useful in your discussion, should not be considered a scholarly resource. Most personal communications should therefore only have an in-text citation and not be listed on the reference page.

When discussing a chat session in the body of your paper, you can either mention the name of the author within the sentence with the words "personal communication" and the date in parenthesis, or place the entire citation in parenthesis at the end of the sentence. For the latter, the citation will look like this, including the parenthesis: (Full Name, personal communication, date). Write out the full date; do not use any abbreviations.