diff --git a/spacy/tests/regression/test_issue1242.py b/spacy/tests/regression/test_issue1242.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..50dc8c37e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/spacy/tests/regression/test_issue1242.py
@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
+from __future__ import unicode_literals
+import pytest
+from ...lang.en import English
+from ...util import load_model
+
+
+def test_issue1242_empty_strings():
+    nlp = English()
+    doc = nlp('')
+    assert len(doc) == 0
+    docs = list(nlp.pipe(['', 'hello']))
+    assert len(docs[0]) == 0
+    assert len(docs[1]) == 1
+
+
+@pytest.mark.models('en')
+def test_issue1242_empty_strings_en_core_web_sm():
+    nlp = load_model('en_core_web_sm')
+    doc = nlp('')
+    assert len(doc) == 0
+    docs = list(nlp.pipe(['', 'hello']))
+    assert len(docs[0]) == 0
+    assert len(docs[1]) == 1