On Tue, Dec 03, 2013 at 04:48:32PM -0500, Nathan Tallman scripsit:
> Thank you, Graydon. I am cleaning up a huge stack of XMLs;
> unfortunately I cannot use lower() because there may be other text in
> <unitdate> that needs to remain capitalized.

Well, bother.  replace() it is, then.

> > <xsl:template match="text()[ancestor::unittittle]">

If there's lots, you might want

<xsl:template match="text()[ancestor::unittittle][normalize-space()]">

instead; the optimizer will _probably_ figure out that you're only
interesting in text nodes with some non-whitespace contents, but it
rarely hurts to provide a hint.

-- Graydon