Beyond the job spec, start-ups require pitch in types that are as ready to empty the trash and book bargain rate flights, as they are to bring in the next customer or deliver the next product.

FORBES: Corporate To Start-up: Can You Make The Leap?

His boat was found floating, empty, with his log-book open charting the depths of his despair.

ECONOMIST: The hubris of racers today

His lunch, which he ate on his own in an enormous, empty dining room while reading a book under the absentminded gaze of the elderly maid, and the black-and-white gaze of his deceased wife looking out from photographs in ornate silver frames, was light: soup and a small portion of fish and mashed potatoes, some of which he would allow to go cold.

NEWYORKER: The Insufferable Gaucho

The girl with the soda snapped a few photographs of the reception area and the empty conference room next to it and signed the guest book.

NEWYORKER: The Conciliator

These are empty information calories, to borrow a phrase from Clay Johnson's timely new book, The Information Diet.

CNN: Why social media couldn't predict the Iowa race

Drew Jones, co-author of a book on co-working, thinks that there is scope to turn empty retail space in the suburbs of big cities into large co-working facilities.

ECONOMIST: Another alternative to the office

The magazine said one book gave "potentially dangerous advice on doing a vigorous workout on an empty stomach and with low carbohydrate intake, which could lead to dizziness and fainting".

BBC: Health risk of 'faddy diets'

When he woke, the carriage was half empty and there was a man who looked part Indian sitting beside him, reading a Batman comic book.

NEWYORKER: The Insufferable Gaucho