Blog posts can be useful sources in academic writing. But how do you cite a blog post or a comment from a blog post with APA referencing? Below, we will explain how to format in-text citations and reference list entries for both.
Citing a Blog Post in APA Referencing
In APA referencing, to cite a blog post, you need to give the post author’s surname and a publication date in parentheses. For instance:
Placing trackers on birds can cause problems (Appleton, 2020).
If the author is named in the text, however, you only need to cite the publication year in parentheses. This helps to prevent unnecessary repetition:
Appleton (2020) states that using geolocators on birds can cause problems.
As always in APA referencing, you also need to give full details of the source in your reference list. For a blog post, the format to use here is:
Surname, Initial(s). (Year, date of publication). Title of blog post. Title of Blog. URL.
For instance, the blog we cited in the example above would be listed as:
Appleton, G. (2020, 4 September). Flagging up potential problems. Wader Tales. https://wadertales.wordpress.com/2020/09/04/flagging-up-potential-problems/
Note that the format for referencing blog posts is the same as for journal articles, with the post title in sentence case and the blog title in title case and italics.
Find this useful?
Subscribe to our newsletter and get writing tips from our editors straight to your inbox.
Citing a Blog Comment in APA Referencing
If required, you can also cite a comment from a blog post in APA referencing. To do this, give the comment writer’s surname (or their username if you don’t have their full name) and the comment date in brackets. For example:
The Academy gives Nobel Prizes for fundamental discoveries (Nicole, 2020).
In your reference list, moreover, the format is as follows:
Surname, Initial(s) or Username. (Year, date of comment). Comment title or first 20 words of the comment [Comment on the blog post ‘Title of post’]. Blog Title. URL.
So, an APA reference list entry for our above example would read:
Nicole. (2020, 6 October). Why doesn’t anyone read the advanced information on the website? Nobel prizes are not given for theories. They are given [Comment on the blog post ‘2020 physics Nobel prize’]. Not Even Wrong. https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=12009&cpage=1#comment-237486
If you can’t link to the comment itself, link to the blog post.
Expert APA Proofreading
You should now be able to cite a blog post or a blog post comment using APA referencing. But if you are still unsure of any aspect of APA style, we have expert proofreaders available to help make sure your work is error free.