Personal - Definition and Overview

A personal or personal ad is an item or notice traditionally in the newspaper, similar to a classified ad but personal in nature. With its rise in popularity, the internet, particularly the web, has also become a common medium for personals. Personals are generally meant to find romance or friendship, and usually include a basic description of the person posting it, and their interests.

Due to newspaper prices being based on characters or lines of text, a jargon of abbreviations and acronyms arose in personals, and have carried over to the internet. Some of the most common are those similar to SWM, which indicates "single white male", and its equivalents for different statuses, races, and genders. Sometimes a "G" is included by gay people, or a letter signifying a religion is included by the religious. Another common abbreviation is ISO meaning "in search of".

Some University Newspapers offer free personals where students direct messages to others on campus. Most notable is The Koala at UCSD and UCI.

Example Usage of Personal