diff --git a/django/test/html.py b/django/test/html.py
index 486a0d358d..76ebe0d4f1 100644
--- a/django/test/html.py
+++ b/django/test/html.py
@@ -225,10 +225,10 @@ class Parser(HTMLParser):
 
 def parse_html(html):
     """
-    Take a string that contains *valid* HTML and turn it into a Python object
-    structure that can be easily compared against other HTML on semantic
-    equivalence. Syntactical differences like which quotation is used on
-    arguments will be ignored.
+    Take a string that contains HTML and turn it into a Python object structure
+    that can be easily compared against other HTML on semantic equivalence.
+    Syntactical differences like which quotation is used on arguments will be
+    ignored.
     """
     parser = Parser()
     parser.feed(html)
diff --git a/docs/topics/testing/tools.txt b/docs/topics/testing/tools.txt
index 7b3ceb3c81..70b7f2df5c 100644
--- a/docs/topics/testing/tools.txt
+++ b/docs/topics/testing/tools.txt
@@ -1615,7 +1615,7 @@ your test suite.
             '<input id="id_accept_terms" type="checkbox" checked>'
         )
 
-    ``html1`` and ``html2`` must be valid HTML. An ``AssertionError`` will be
+    ``html1`` and ``html2`` must contain HTML. An ``AssertionError`` will be
     raised if one of them cannot be parsed.
 
     Output in case of error can be customized with the ``msg`` argument.
@@ -1626,7 +1626,7 @@ your test suite.
     comparison is based on HTML semantics. See
     :meth:`~SimpleTestCase.assertHTMLEqual` for details.
 
-    ``html1`` and ``html2`` must be valid HTML. An ``AssertionError`` will be
+    ``html1`` and ``html2`` must contain HTML. An ``AssertionError`` will be
     raised if one of them cannot be parsed.
 
     Output in case of error can be customized with the ``msg`` argument.
@@ -1661,8 +1661,7 @@ your test suite.
     of ``needle`` occurrences will be strictly verified.
 
     Whitespace in most cases is ignored, and attribute ordering is not
-    significant. The passed-in arguments must be valid HTML. See
-    :meth:`~SimpleTestCase.assertHTMLEqual` for more details.
+    significant. See :meth:`~SimpleTestCase.assertHTMLEqual` for more details.
 
 .. method:: SimpleTestCase.assertJSONEqual(raw, expected_data, msg=None)