This entry was posted on 27 April, 2009 at 2:37 pm	and is filed under Referencing. Tagged: apa, blog post, Referencing, style guidance, tweeting, twittering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
When I blogged my guessing I hadn’t recently reviewed the APA Style Guide to Electronic References (2007). After a commenter asked that very question I went looking for an answer. On (p.23) of that guide we’re told to use the author’s real name if it is available, but otherwise to use the screen-name.
If APA is going to insist on real name, then I’d like to see provision for identification of the name under which the author wrote to be consistent with APA’s principle of being able to find the source.
Way back in 1998 Land (a.k.a Beads) recommended that the real name ought to be used if it can be found, including the nickname in brackets with “a.k.a” immediately after. Personally I’d prefer an “as:” tag, for example if I were to cite one of your tweets I’d like to list it: Johnson, G. J. [as: llordllama].
It’ll be interesting to see people quoting real name unknown people’s tweets (I know I follow a number of people who’s real names are shrouded!) in a set of references. Could make for some interesting reference lists.