[Air-l] How to cite blogs?

Frank Schaap architext at fragment.nl
Wed Oct 1 02:09:32 PDT 2003


Thomas N. Burg wrote:
> I'm wondering how to cite blogs correctly. That involves some aspects I think. 
>   
> There are the citation rules - not mentioning blogs, at least to my knowledge - and some ethical 
> issues. If a blog has a denomination and no author/editor mentioned what am I supposed to do if I know the name of that person. Or if he just uses a first name or ... 
>   
> I posted this question on my blog (in German) http://randgaenge.net/2003/09/28.html#a1941 and got several replies. 

There are some very useful remarks in the comments (like how to cite 
newsgroup posts), but I think in the end it depends on what style of 
citation the journal or publisher wants to use. Many in the 'social 
sciences' field use the APA style and there is a brief section on electronic 
references on their site:

http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html

However, they appear to only deal with 'bonafide' scientific material. 
Citing a weblog or newsgroup postings isn't dealt with.

Personally, I stick with the reasoning that if something has been publicly 
'published', whether on the web or in a newsgroup, you cite it by using its 
author's name, even if that is a pseudonym. If there is no easily 
discernable author, I use the 'post' title as a replacement for the author's 
name, because that's generally the way you cite an unattributed news media 
article.

This makes it easy to refer to invidual posts/articles in your text instead 
of having to point to the 'container' publication, like the newspaper or 
weblog name. The post title is usually abbreviated to the 3 first words in 
the in-text reference, like so: (First three words: 2003).

So, depending on what citation style you use and the publisher/editor's 
requirements, this works most of the time for me.


Frank.






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