XSLT preserve white space in list column name WITHIN variable
<p>Thank you in advance if you answer this. We've looked EVERYWHERE and have hit a wall.</p>

<p>I'm working from a SharePoint 2013 calendar.  There's a list item called "Start Date".  In the XSLT, I'm attempting to reference this to create a variable, but the white space is causing an error.</p>

<p>Does anyone know how to preserve this white space WITHIN the attribute being referenced from a SharePoint list item so it can be used to create a variable ($date)?  I know there are many ways to preserve white space in XSLT (or remove it), but none of those methods seem to work in this instance.</p>

<p>Another caveat, we cannot rename the column (Start Time), since it's a global list content type/attribute that needs to retain the space for other applications.
Any assistance is appreciated!</p>

<pre><code>&lt;xsl:variable name="date" select="ddwrt:FormatDate(string(@Start Time), 1033, 1)"/&gt;
&lt;xsl:variable name="day" select="format-number(substring-before(substring-after($date,'/'),'/'),'00.')"/&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>We're using this calculation to extract the month and create a numerical representation (ie: Dec = 12) to create grouping options for a custom web part that outputs the calendar in a very custom way)</p>

<ol>
<li><p>The SharePoint Calendar List Item:<a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/cLoAZ.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/cLoAZ.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p></li>
<li><p>The XSLT Code: <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/rtbMm.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/rtbMm.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p></li>
<li><p>The desired output (grouping with month displaying in numerical format)<a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/M11XP.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/M11XP.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p></li>
</ol>