Semicolon in ID attribute

Semicolon in ID attribute


Hi,
I have an text field whose ID is something like 'j_id1:username'. Now
if I try to retrieve the input field using jQuery('#j_id1:username'),
it does not work. It is only reading the id until the semicolon and
thus looking for an element with id 'j_id1'.
I can not avoid having semi colons as this is a framework generated
code and it happens to be a standard convention. Is there any way I
can escape the semicolon or some how access the fields with semicolon
in the IDs?
Please not that I have to access the fields by IDs. I know that the
ostensible work around is to use other attributes (like class). But
there are other constrains that keep me from doing this.
any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Phani