The rules help you traverse the document when you don't have templates that match.
The built-in template rules:
For parents (elements and documents):
<xsl:template match="*|/"> <xsl:apply-templates/> </xsl:template>
For text and attributes:
<xsl:template match="text()|@*"> <xsl:value-of select="."/> </xsl:template>
For processing instructions and comments
<xsl:template match="processing-instruction()|comment()"/>
Used alone, these rules give you just the "text" along the 'child' axis.