Outside of a for I declare a variable using var list;. I use this variable inside of my for loop like so: // add the html to the list if (list == undefined) list = item; else list.append(item.contents()); item is a cloned jquery object build from a $('list_template').clone(); call (list_template is a div with <li> elements inside). What I am doing is creating a list, which I will then appendTo() where I need it. Right now this code works fine, but it doesn't seem right to me. Unfortunatly, I cannot seem to figure out how to correctly declare the list variable to be an empty Jquery object. I have tried both: var list = $([]); var list = $(''); Both of those cause the append to not work correctly (or as expected) with list.html() being null. Is there a way to initialize my variable to an empty jquery object, so all I have to do is list.append(item.contents()); without the if/else statements?