xml element name with colon

The colons indicate that those elements are in the ns1 namespace. This is needed when you are using multiple schemas. Assuming the document only uses ns1, it is essentially equivalent to not having any "ns1:" in those tags. See this guide for more info.

Okay, here it is.

XmlDocument.CreateElement("prefix", "name", "uri");

reference here if it helps someone else: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/c22k3d47.aspx 1