It would be very useful to be able to have all properly formed input elements returned from a form via serializeArray, even the empty, W3C-unsuccessful ones. Python's CGI handling eg has this option. It's useful in the case where you have dynamically generated bunches of input elements; their being there but empty, is the most direct way to convey what the user did with them. Otherwise you have to add a non-empty hidden field for every input element to inform the caller that each is really there, or, some other roundabout method. It would be just an optional flag, as with Python's CGI.