How to Cite a Speech in APA Style | Format & Examples

How you cite a speech in APA Style depends on the format in which you heard it.

For an audio recording of a speech found online, list the speaker, the date when the speech took place, the title in italics, “Speech audio recording” in square brackets, the website, and the URL. You can use a timestamp to specify a location in the in-text citation.

Scribbr’s free APA Citation Generator can help you cite a speech correctly.

APA format Speaker last name, Initials. (Year, Month Day). Speech title [Speech audio recording]. Website Name. URL
APA reference entry Kennedy, J. F. (1961, January 20). Presidential inaugural address [Speech audio recording]. American Rhetoric. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkinaugural.htm
APA in-text citation (Kennedy, 1961, 01:45)

The formats for citing a paper presentation from a conference and for citing speeches that don’t fit any of these categories are shown below. The formats for citing a TED Talk or a speech uploaded to YouTube are explained elsewhere.

Citing a paper presentation

To cite a paper presentation from an academic conference, use the following format. List the date as the range of dates across which the conference took place.

APA format Author name, Initials. (Year, Month DayDay). Paper title [Paper presentation]. Conference Name, City, State, Country. URL
APA reference entry Jang, S. (2019, August 8–11). Deconstructing the opposition of natural/arbitrary in Coleridge’s theory of language [Paper presentation]. NASSR 2019: Romantic Elements, Chicago, IL, United States.
APA in-text citation (Jang, 2019)

However, if you’re citing a published conference paper from a journal or book, use the format of that source type.

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Citing speeches as personal communications

Speeches that cannot be accessed by the reader in some sort of recording or transcript and were not part of a conference are cited as personal communications.

This is the format used in APA Style for sources the reader won’t be able to access themselves. Because they are not retrievable, personal communications don’t appear in the reference list; they’re just cited in the text.

Personal communication citation
The topic of genetic modification was covered in the speech (H. So, personal communication, February 19, 2019).

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If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2023, December 27). How to Cite a Speech in APA Style | Format & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved October 4, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/apa-examples/speech/

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Jack Caulfield

Jack is a Brit based in Amsterdam, with an MA in comparative literature. He writes for Scribbr about his specialist topics: grammar, linguistics, citations, and plagiarism. In his spare time, he reads a lot of books.