diff --git a/Lib/test/test_xml_etree.py b/Lib/test/test_xml_etree.py
index f1a774a..4e161ca 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_xml_etree.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_xml_etree.py
@@ -1822,6 +1822,26 @@
 
     """
 
+def check_html_empty_elems_serialization(self):
+    # issue 15970
+    # from http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/index/elements.html
+    """
+
+    >>> empty_elems = ['AREA', 'BASE', 'BASEFONT', 'BR', 'COL', 'FRAME', 'HR',
+    ...                'IMG', 'INPUT', 'ISINDEX', 'LINK', 'META', 'PARAM']
+    >>> elems = ''.join('<%s />' % elem for elem in empty_elems)
+    >>> serialize(ET.XML('<html>%s</html>' % elems), method='html')
+    '<html><AREA><BASE><BASEFONT><BR><COL><FRAME><HR><IMG><INPUT><ISINDEX><LINK><META><PARAM></html>'
+    >>> serialize(ET.XML('<html>%s</html>' % elems.lower()), method='html')
+    '<html><area><base><basefont><br><col><frame><hr><img><input><isindex><link><meta><param></html>'
+    >>> elems = ''.join('<%s></%s>' % (elem, elem) for elem in empty_elems)
+    >>> serialize(ET.XML('<html>%s</html>' % elems), method='html')
+    '<html><AREA><BASE><BASEFONT><BR><COL><FRAME><HR><IMG><INPUT><ISINDEX><LINK><META><PARAM></html>'
+    >>> serialize(ET.XML('<html>%s</html>' % elems.lower()), method='html')
+    '<html><area><base><basefont><br><col><frame><hr><img><input><isindex><link><meta><param></html>'
+
+    """
+
 # --------------------------------------------------------------------
 
 
diff --git a/Lib/xml/etree/ElementTree.py b/Lib/xml/etree/ElementTree.py
index 2b0cf0c..d8ec67a 100644
--- a/Lib/xml/etree/ElementTree.py
+++ b/Lib/xml/etree/ElementTree.py
@@ -945,7 +945,7 @@
         write(_escape_cdata(elem.tail, encoding))
 
 HTML_EMPTY = ("area", "base", "basefont", "br", "col", "frame", "hr",
-              "img", "input", "isindex", "link", "meta" "param")
+              "img", "input", "isindex", "link", "meta", "param")
 
 try:
     HTML_EMPTY = set(HTML_EMPTY)