References are provided in a 'reference' element of a message, with a namespace of 'urn:xmpp:reference:0'. The element MUST contain a type attribute denoting the type of the reference and a uri attribute of the thing that is referenced. It MAY contain begin, end and anchor elements. A begin attribute is used to mark the index in the body of the referring message of the first character (TODO: define character appropriately) in the reference, with 0 being the index of the first character. An end attribute is similarly used for the index of the last character of the reference. Where the reference is not a substring of the message body in the referring stanza, begin and end are not used. An anchor attribute is used when the referring message is not the one containing the reference element, and points to the previous message containing the reference (the referring message).

Note that the URIs of the reference and anchor do not need to refer to the same mechanism as that in which the reference was received. E.g., a service could listen for mentions in a MIX channels of users outside that channel, and send them messages containing a reference to let them know that they've been mentioned.

Mentions are a reference to a user's bare JID, and have a type of 'mention'.

Data references are a generic reference without additional information. The URI points to an 'item' that is able to be fetched. This is useful for, for example, fetching an item from pubsub, as in the example below. TODO: check URI syntax for refering to a pubsub item.

Sometimes it's desirable to annotate a reference in a previous message. An example of this might be where a MIX channel asynchronously adds information about references made in previous messages by users. In this case the message MUST NOT contain a body. Here the anchor attribute is used to provide a URI to the previous message. TODO: URI scheme for messages.