Template:COinS safe

Template documentation

Usage

This template is a notice for templates that may be used in citation templates. By default, it indicates the template is safe for use as shown above.

To indicate a template that should not be used in a citation template:

{{COinS safe|n}}

Issue

Citation templates such as Citation Style 1 and Citation Style 2 generate COinS metadata. If a template is used in a citation template field, then it may inject HTML into the metadata.

Compare the rendered HTML for {{cite book}} with |author= using no template and using {{smallcaps}}.

Markup	Renders as
{{cite book |author=Sam Drucker |title=Title}}	Sam Drucker. Title.  Sam Drucker. Title.
{{cite book |author={{smallcaps|Sam Drucker}} |title=Title}}	Sam Drucker. Title.  Sam Drucker. Title.

The author metadata is in the rft.aulast field. In this case, it is percent-encoded and is rendered as <span class="smallcaps" style="font-variant:small-caps;">Sam Drucker</span>

Reference management software will interpret the entire span as the author name.

See also