This is a suggestion for new genfixes to be added to AWB/JWB.
They would detect and fix certain malformed citation templates which cause a reference to display mangled wikitext rather than invoking the template.
There are three specific cases: newline in template name; single brace introducing template; missing braces after template. The first of these can be extended easily to templates other than citation templates.
Cirrus searches for affected articles, suggested AWB regexes and replacements are in https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1031469286