non-breaking spaces in html tables

I am using XSL to create a table in HTML. I need the cells to have borders
even when nothing is in them. 
In the past I did this by adding non-breaking spaces with " ", for
example:

<td><a href="{$ConnectedTableName}.htm"><xsl:value-of
select="$ConnectedTableName"/></a>&#160;</td>

This was working fine in August, but now instead of a non-breaking space I
get an A with a little curly thing on top of it.

So I switched to:

<td><a href="{$ConnectedTableName}.htm"><xsl:value-of
select="$ConnectedTableName"/></a><xsl:text>&#xa0;</xsl:text></td>

This works fine when I test it in XML Spy, but still produces the strange
character when I run it in our product using MSXML4.

Has something changed in the recent versions of MSXML4 that is screwing me
up, or am I using outmoded code?

Yours,
Walter Crockett

 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list