Citing a Weblog Entry in MLA Style

I've always been fascinated by citation style (and things have come a LOOONNNG way since I wrote "Cyber Citations" for Internet World back in 1996!) But why am I not surprised that the MLA is STILL way behind when it comes to electronic sources. I think the Columbia Guide to Online Style by Walker and Taylor has got it right. (soon to be in 2nd edition, I believe)

Regarding the point you raise about nomenclature: I think just "weblog" does the trick. Adjectives clutter it up and invite subjective misinterpretations.

Boy... your "Cyber Citations" are cited, and in some cases, it seems, copied all over. I think you're probably right about dropping the Personal or Professional, but it does seem to me that the nature of a group weblog makes authorship slightly different. Perhaps the solution would be to change it around to

LastName, Firstname. "Title of Blog entry." [Weblog Entry.] Name of Weblog. [etc.]

I've actually implemented the change I floated above, which makes this format more closely parallel with the format for citing a blog comment.

How would you do an in-text citation for a blog post in MLA format? That is, what would you put in the parentheses if the author's name has already been used to introduce the direct quote?

For example, if I were to quote multiple posts from your weblog in the form of:

Dennis G. Jerz states, "direct quote here" (???).

and somewhere later in my paper say:

Dennis G. Jerz writes, "another direct quote here" (???).

The reader should be able to use the info in the parentheses to find the correct works cited reference.

I'm leaning towards the first three words of the weblog post title or the file name for each particular post.

Frankly, I've seen several different suggestions, which is very confusing, but I haven't been able to find the same information twice. All of which leads me to believe that I can pretty much pick one and no one would know that I wasn't doing it correctly! But, before I did that, I thought I'd ask your opinion.

Yes, using the first few words of the title to differentiate between two sources with the same authorship is good MLA style. When marking a student paper that unnecessarily repeats the author's name, I might cross it out reflexively but I doubt I would consider it "wrong". I wouldn't put the file name in the parentheses -- not all weblog software offers meaningful names for individual posts. A long URL would be too distracting.

In the case you mention, I would probably just add a bit of context:

In a March 2002 posting on X, Dennis G. Jerz writes, "blah blah" ("The Post Where I Go Blah Blah"). In a later posting on Y, he writes, "Da da da" ("The Post Where I Go Da Da Da").

Thanks

But, I have a blog site from one person... nobody can edit it but him... i AM using multiple posts, which all have titles, but i'm not doing exact quotes... just referencing not common knowledge information... so how do i cite so that the reader will know the info is from that blog. (cos if i give the title of the blogs they may not know what site it is from) understand? i guess i'm asking how to relate the in-text citations that use the titles of the individual blogs to the works cited page that only lists the overall name of the blog site and the authors title of the collection of posts.

sorry i'm being confusing :)

If you mean you're not sure how to introduce your source in the body of your essay, you might try

In his popular papercrafting blog, former Yugoslavian pastry chef and accomplished yodeler Viktor Kominsky has posted several designs for a more efficient heat pump.

The your Works Cited list, (under the name Kominsky, Victor) would list the specific blog entry you wanted to mention.

Really, when all else fails, just treat it as you would any other web page, but treat each entry as part of a collection that is bound together under the title of the blog.