title: Empty strings in pandas series counted as one when getting the number of words in strings
body: <p>I have a problem when counting the number of items in a pandas string series when there is no sting in a row.</p>
  
  <p>I´m able to count the number of words when there are one ore more items per row. But, if the row has no value (it´s an empty string when running 
  pd.['mytext'].str.split(',')), I´m getting also one.</p>
  
  <p>These answers are not working for me <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37483470/how-to-calculate-number-of-words-in-a-string-in-dataframe/52918606?noredirect=1#comment92747031_52918606">Answer 1 to a solution which gives one for an empty string</a> <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47970561/splitting-a-column-of-strings-and-counting-the-number-of-words-with-pandas">Answer 2 to a solution which gives one for an empty string</a>.</p>
  
  <p>How can I handle this in a pandas one liner? Thanks in advance.</p>
  
  <p>Taken the example from the first answer:</p>
  
  <pre><code>df = pd.DataFrame(['one apple','','box of oranges','pile of fruits outside', 'one banana', 'fruits'])
  df.columns = ['fruits']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The verified answer was </p>
  
  <pre><code>count = df['fruits'].str.split().apply(len).value_counts()
  count.index = count.index.astype(str) + ' words:'
  count.sort_index(inplace=True)
  count
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Which gives</p>
  
  <pre><code>Out[13]:  
  0 words:    1
  1 words:    1
  2 words:    2
  3 words:    1
  4 words:    1
  Name: fruits, dtype: int64
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want a zero for the second string but every solution tried gave me a one.</p>