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.