David, I read over your post, I tried to place <xsl:text> around the
  bracket, this didn't help. I realize that if I place the <insert> tag
  dirrectly into the para template, this will work just fine. However,
  the <insert> tag is used to index new text in our documents. Therefore
  it can be anywhere.

You lost me. The code I replied to had an ,insert explictly in teh
template, i just added a template.

If it's not working make a small (6 line, complete runnable) example
input and stylesheet that's doing the wrong thing and repost.

David

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