diff --git a/modules/number-formatting.xml b/modules/number-formatting.xml
index e902f9d..be48f5e 100755
--- a/modules/number-formatting.xml
+++ b/modules/number-formatting.xml
@@ -80,9 +80,6 @@
 					<xsl:message terminate="yes">The mode parameter of function infosci:separate-thousands must be one of the values 'L', 'l', 'R' or 'r'.</xsl:message>
 				</xsl:otherwise>
 			</xsl:choose>
-			<xsl:variable name="digit-separator">
-				<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&amp;thinsp;</xsl:text>
-			</xsl:variable>
 			<!--
 				Recursively subdivide the sequence. Terminate when sequence length <= 3. Note that we have to use the numeric entity for thin space rather than the character entity &thinsp; because of the weird way XSLT handles character entities. Using the character entity, the HTML visibly displays as "&thinsp;".
 			-->