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}}

  • |addtext= — additional text shown after the main message

When the template is set to not safe, the page is placed into [[:]].

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. 

<span class="citation book" >Sam Drucker.&#32;''Title''.</span><span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rft.aulast=Sam+Drucker&rft.au=Sam+Drucker&rfr_id=info:sid/hi.wikipedia.org:%E0%A4%86%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%83%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%BF:COinS_safe/doc"><span style="display: none;">&nbsp;</span></span>

{{cite book |author={{smallcaps|Sam Drucker}} |title=Title}}

Sam Drucker. Title. 

<span class="citation book" ><span class="smallcaps" style="font-variant:small-caps;">Sam Drucker</span>.&#32;''Title''.</span><span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=book&rft.btitle=Title&rft.aulast=%3Cspan+class%3D%22smallcaps%22+style%3D%22font-variant%3Asmall-caps%3B%22%3ESam+Drucker%3C%2Fspan%3E&rft.au=%3Cspan+class%3D%22smallcaps%22+style%3D%22font-variant%3Asmall-caps%3B%22%3ESam+Drucker%3C%2Fspan%3E&rfr_id=info:sid/hi.wikipedia.org:%E0%A4%86%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%83%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%BF:COinS_safe/doc"><span style="display: none;">&nbsp;</span></span>

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.