You are not showing all your code. But you could check if split list is to short, and if so then extend with empty string. Example: a = '1st St & A blvd' s = a.split(' & ') print s diff = 3-len(s) if diff != 0: s.extend([' ']*diff) print s Outputs: ['1st St', 'A blvd'] ['1st St', 'A blvd', ' '] Or use try/except: a = [1,2] try: print a[2] except IndexError: #a[2] is not possible, will give Indexerror, then dont do anything: pass