<table>
  <xsl:for-each-group select="word" group-by="position() mod 4">
    <tr>
      <xsl:for-each select="current-group()">
        <td><xsl:value-of select="."/></td>
      </xsl:for-each>
    </tr>
  </xsl:for-each-group>
</table>

I have a list of words, possibly 3500 to 7000 in length, in
alphabetical order. I need to display them in an HTML page in a table
of four columns. The first quarter of the words should be in the first
column, the second quarter in the second column, etc. Since the total
may not be divisible by four, the final column may be incomplete.
Let's say the input is of the form:
<wordList>
  <word>aaron</word>
  <word>abated</word>
  <word>abatement</word>
  ..
</wordList>

How can I do this with an XSLT transform?

I can use XSLT 2.0

I have done similar things in the past, but looking back, they aren't
graceful and I don't think they take advantage of the current
capabilities of the language.

--
John Snelson, Oracle Corporation            http://snelson.org.uk/john
Berkeley DB XML:        http://www.oracle.com/database/berkeley-db/xml
XQilla:                                  http://xqilla.sourceforge.net