c# - How to prevent blank xmlns attributes in output from .NET's XmlDocument?

Question

When generating XML from XmlDocument in .NET, a blank xmlns attribute appears the first time an element without an associated namespace is inserted; how can this be prevented?

Example:

XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument();
xml.AppendChild(xml.CreateElement("root",
    "whatever:name-space-1.0"));
xml.DocumentElement.AppendChild(xml.CreateElement("loner"));
Console.WriteLine(xml.OuterXml);

Output:

<root xmlns="whatever:name-space-1.0"><loner xmlns="" /></root>

Desired Output:

<root xmlns="whatever:name-space-1.0"><loner /></root>

Is there a solution applicable to the XmlDocument code, not something that occurs after converting the document to a string with OuterXml?

My reasoning for doing this is to see if I can match the standard XML of a particular protocol using XmlDocument-generated XML. The blank xmlns attribute may not break or confuse a parser, but it's also not present in any usage that I've seen of this protocol.

Answer 1

Thanks to Jeremy Lew's answer and a bit more playing around, I figured out how to remove blank xmlns attributes: pass in the root node's namespace when creating any child node you want not to have a prefix on. Using a namespace without a prefix at the root means that you need to use that same namespace on child elements for them to also not have prefixes.

Fixed Code:

XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument();
xml.AppendChild(xml.CreateElement("root", "whatever:name-space-1.0"));
xml.DocumentElement.AppendChild(xml.CreateElement("loner", "whatever:name-space-1.0")); 
Console.WriteLine(xml.OuterXml);

Thanks everyone to all your answers which led me in the right direction!