How to Cite a Blog Comment in APA Style

by Timothy McAdoo

We’ve covered how to cite an entire blog and how to cite a specific blog post. So, what about when you want to cite a comment on a blog?

The elements of the reference are as follows:

"who": This is the name of the individual who made the comment, either real or a screen name, whichever is shown.

"when": This is the date of the comment (not the date of the blog post).

"what": Use "Re: " followed by the title of the blog post.

"where": Each comment usually has a unique URL. Unfortunately, blogs differ in how they present that URL, so you may have to hunt for it. Look for words like permalink or persistent link or just click the time stamp, which will often change the URL in your browser to the specific URL of that comment.

For example, click a time stamp in my first comment below and you’ll find that the URL in your browser becomes http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2016/04/how-to-cite-a-blog-comment-in-apa-style.html#comment-6a01157041f4e3970b01b8d1ba04c1970c. It’s important to use the URL of the comment itself because sometimes the same person will leave multiple comments, and this takes the guesswork out of which one you meant.

If the comment does not have a unique URL, just use the URL of the blog post itself.

Using some of the same examples from the previous post, here’s how to cite comments on a blog:

Example References David, L. (2010, October 29). Re: E-ZPass is a life-saver (literally) [Blog comment]. Retrieved from http://freakonomics.com/2010/10/29/e-zpass-is-a-life-saver-literally/#comment-109178 Mt2mt2. (2015, November 12). Re: A fast graph isomorphism algorithm [Blog comment]. Retrieved from https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2015/11/11/a-fast-graph-isomorphism-algorithm/#comment-72615

In-Text Citations

As with other APA Style references, the in-text citations will match the author name(s) and the year.

Example In-Text Citation ... a "significant difference in the definitions" (Mt2mt2, 2015).

Bonus

Leave a comment and you may find yourself included in this post! In a few weeks, I will update the examples above to include a reference to one comment below.