Before this age of increasing adoption of digital technology for the instant transfer of information, letters were the primary medium of communication. These historical records bear a wealth of knowledge and experience. And even now, when we need to borrow these words, we start by learning how to cite a letter in 2023 properly.
Even though several of these letters went missing over time, the available ones are safely stored in digital archives, providing scholars and researchers with knowledge essential to their work.
As a researcher, you may have to cite a letter someone wrote, especially when writing a paper or report in history or the social sciences. Either way, your citation structure will differ depending on your style, from the Modern Language Association (MLA) to American Psychological Association (APA), Chicago or Harved style.
This article will discuss how to cite a letter in 2023 and provide the steps and sample MLA, APA, Chicago, and Harvard citation styles.
Table of contents
How do I cite a letter?
Here are step-by-step guides you can follow to help you cite a letter in MLA, APA, Chicago, and Harvard structures.
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#1. How to cite a letter in MLA Style
In the MLA format example, you should start with the “Author” field and list the name of the letter’s author. For the “Title of source” field, describe the letter. In the description, mention the name of the receiver. Then, if you know the letter’s date, remember to list it too.
You can follow these steps and samples:
Step 1
Start with the author’s name.
Write the author’s last name first, followed by a comma. Then add the person’s first name and, if you have it, the middle initial after the comma. Put a period at the end of this part of your citation.
For instance: Peters, Kate.
Step 2
Include the letter’s title or subject line and put quotation marks around it.
Include the title or subject line of the letter after the author’s name, if there is one. All words, including nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs, should be written in the title case. Close the quotation marks around the title with a period inside.
It may now look like: Peters, Kate. “Thoughts for Tradesmen.”
If there is no title or subject line, you can mention to who the letter was addressed and end with a period.
For instance: Peters, Kate. Letter to Lyon John.
Step 3
List the recipient and the date they received it.
Add the name of the recipient of unpublished letters and personal communications. Start with the person’s first name, any middle initials, and last name in that order.
After the recipient’s name put a comma before including the date they received the letter in the day-month-year format. You can use the date on the letter if you don’t know the exact day the recipient received it.
For instance: Peters, Kate. “Thoughts for Tradesmen.” Received by Lyon P. John, 18 July 2013.
Step 4
Specify the location or collection, if applicable.
For the benefit of researchers, letters by well-known authors or historical figures are usually in library collections. Start with the collection’s name, add a comma and include the name and location of the organization that holds the collection. Your citation should end with the letter’s format.
For instance: Peters, Kate. Letter to Lyon John. 18 July 2013. The Sales Brothers Group Papers, New York State Archives, New York, Manuscript.
#2. How to cite a letter in APA style
Most academics and researchers in the social sciences use the American Psychological Association (APA) format.
Whether you access the archive digitally or physically, you can follow these steps when citing a private letter in APA style.
Step 1
Begin your citation with the author’s last name.
After the last name, put a comma, then type their first and middle initial if you have it.
For instance: Peters, K.
Step 2
Add the letter’s date in parentheses.
Put the letter’s date after the author’s name in your citation. Start with the year, put a comma and follow with the day and the month. Close the parentheses and add a period.
For instance: Peters, K. (2013, 18 July).
Step 3
Give the document a title and description. Put the title in italics if the letter is an independent document, and only capitalize the first word and any proper nouns when using sentence-case.
Don’t italicize a title if it is a part of a collection. After the title, add the term “Letter” in square brackets to denote the document’s format. A period should come after the final bracket.
For instance: Peters, K. (2013, 18 July). Peters Kate to Lyon John, July 18, 2013 [Letter].
Step 4
Continue with a URL if the letter is online.
If you found the letter online, start with “Retrieved from” and write a full URL for the letter’s source.
For instance: Peters, K. (2013, 18 July). Peters Kate to Lyon John, August 29, 2013 [Letter]. Retrieved from http://www.nyc.gov/manuscript/
Step 5
Include location information.
Sometimes old letters and special collections are stored in archives in libraries. If you got your information from the print letter, mention the library or museum and the precise locality.
Example: Peters, K. (2013, 18 July). Peters Kate to Lyon John, August 29, 2013 [Letter]. The Sales Brothers Group Papers, New York State Archives, New York.
Step 6
For the body of your article, use parenthetical citations.
With the APA style, you can use parenthetical citations that direct the reader to the complete source in your reference list. Include the author’s last name and the letter’s date of composition.
For example: (Peters, 2013)
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#3. How to cite a letter in the Chicago Manual of Style or CMS
The CMS is usually for past, fictitious, and literary academia.
Even though the Chicago style is also called the Turabian style, there is a slight variation between the two. While Turabian is intended for students and does not require publication information, Chicago is more often for business people.
However, ensure that you correctly put commas and include a middle name abbreviation, if available, in both styles.
Step 1
Start your bibliographic citation with the name of the author. Start with their last name, include a comma, followed by a first name and middle initial, if known, and close with a period in the end.
Example: Peters, Kate.
Step 2
Include a title for the letter.
The next thing is to repeat the author’s name, but this time in the first-name-last name structure. Then continue with “to” and the recipient’s name. End this stage with a comma,
Example: Peters, Kate. Kate Peters to Lyon John,
Step 3
Add the place where the letter was written.
Provide the state or the country. However, if the data is unavailable, you can skip it in your citation. Also, end this stage with a comma.
Example: Peters, Kate. Kate Peters to Lyon John, New York, NYC,
Step 4
Provide the date of the letter.
With the month-day-year format, state exactly when the author wrote the letter. You can close this stage with a period because if the letter is an independent article, this is all you need for a bibliographic citation.
Example: Peters, Kate. Kate Peters to Lyon John, New York, NYC, July 18, 2013.
Step 5
For letters found in archive collections, end with publication information.
A library or museum may have certain letters in its archives or special collections, or they may have them published in a print collection. Also, several scanned copies of archival correspondence are available online.
Whichever method you employed to get the letter, be sure to let your readers know where you got it from so they can do the same.
- For archives: Peters, Kate. Kate Peters to Lyon John, New York, NYC, July 18, 2013. Manuscript. Library of Congress. The Sales Brothers Group Papers, 2013.
- For online: Peters, Kate. Kate Peters to Lyon John, New York, NYC, July 18, 2013. http://www.nyc.gov/manuscript/
Step 6
Your footnotes should begin with the letter’s title.
Do not include the author’s name in your footnotes inside the main body of your article. Instead, skip straight to the letter’s heading. Then have a comma after the title and the date. This is all the data for the footnote for independent letters.
Example: Kate Peters to Lyon John, July 18, 2013.
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#4. How to cite a letter in Harvard referencing style
For the Harvard referencing style, you should use the author’s last name and the year in the narrative and parenthesis to cite a letter.
Step 1
In the in-text citation, start with the author’s surname followed by a comma and the year of the letter’s publication.
For example: (Peters, 2013)
Step 2
In reference list entries, start with the author’s surname, then a comma, and the initial and middle names (if known.) You should include “Letter to” before the receiver’s first name, surname, and date in the Day-Month format.
For instance: Peters, K. (2013) Letter to John Lyon, 18 July.
FAQs on how to cite a letter
Letters are excellent data sources for research, but as with any other reference work, it’s important to cite them properly in both your bibliography and the text.
When you cite a letter in the body of your research paper, enclose the relevant passage in quotation marks and add a brief citation at the end of the sentence. The last name of the author and the year of the letter’s publication should appear there as (surname, year)
According to the author, she had “gotten a detailed letter some months ago,” (Peters, 2013).
You will need the author’s and receiver’s names, the letter’s title, the precise location the author sent it from, and the date the author sent it.
In-line citations usually are not fixed with the Chicago style. So, you can include the source in a footnote at the bottom of the page.
Reduce the format and number the reference for in-text footnotes. After the author’s location at the time of writing, put the date the recipient received the letter in parentheses if that information is available.
For example:
Peters Kate to Lyon John, New York, NYC, July 18, 2013.
Conclusion
Letters are a great example of a primary source when writing a research paper. They offer firsthand recollections of events and perceptions and opinions of the historic period.
When looking for historical personal letter resources, the Library of Congress, New York State Archives, and numerous universities have excellent library websites for you. Just make careful to credit the collection appropriately if you take references from their database.
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