Citation templates are often used to format the citations that show in the reference list. Many of these templates can create anchors that allow links from reference templates that are placed in-text with the content to the full citation in the reference list. These links are a convenience and are not a requirement; the use of reference and citation templates is also not required.
The in-text links are formatted manually or automatically as #CITEREF normally followed by the author name(s) and the year of publication. The citation template then creates an anchor using an HTML id manually or automatically formatted as CITEREF followed by the author last name(s) and the year. For citations without an author, the anchor can be customized.
Anchor support across citation templates is not standardized, and not all templates support anchors.
This page discusses only general citation templates and does not include any of the hundreds of specific-source templates. See Category:Specific-source templates, although many of these may be in Category:Citation templates or not properly categorized. Many specific-source templates use a general citation template as a meta-template.