I create an xml file in D6 from code that should result in: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UT-8"?> <video> <headline>mytext</headline> </video> What it results in is (I'll omit the xml tag for brevity's sake...it comes out fine) <video> <headline><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ut-8" /> mytext </headline> </video> If I put tags above, say, <dummy>mytext</dummy>, I get <video> <dummy>mytext</dummy> <headline><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ut-8" /> mytext </headline> </video> If I put the <meta> info in the output myself at the top, I get <video> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ut-8" /> <headline><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ut-8" /> mytext </headline> </video> What DOES work, in terms of getting the meta tag out of the <headline> tag, is to put another tag before it with the word 'head' , resulting in <video> <headdummy><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ut-8" /> mytext </headdummy> <headline>mytext</headline> </video>