I am reading Effective C# by Bill Wagner. In Item 14 - Minimize Duplicate Initialization Logic, he shows the following example of using the new optional parameters feature in a constructor: public MyClass(int initialCount = 0, string name = "") Notice that he used "" instead of string.Empty. He comments: You'll note [in an example above] that the second constructor specified "" for the default value on the name parameter, rather than the more customary string.Empty. That's because string.Empty is not a compile-time constant. It is a static property defined in the string class. Because it is not a compile constant, you cannot use it for the default value for a parameter. If we cannot use the string.Empty static in all situations, then doesn't that defeat the purpose of it? I thought that we would use it to be sure that we have a system-independent means of referring to the empty string. Is my understanding wrong? Thanks.