diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index f964828c..5c097af5 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,5 +1,8 @@
 # desc (development version)
 
+* An empty `Depends` field is now properly normalized and formatted.
+  (#148, @kevinushey)
+
 # desc 1.4.3
 
 * `$set()` and `desc_set()` now can omit checks if `check = FALSE`
diff --git a/R/deps.R b/R/deps.R
index c7303cb5..09dd3aa0 100644
--- a/R/deps.R
+++ b/R/deps.R
@@ -96,6 +96,7 @@ parse_deps <- function(type, deps) {
   deps <- str_trim(strsplit(deps, ",")[[1]])
   deps <- lapply(strsplit(deps, "\\("), str_trim)
   deps <- lapply(deps, sub, pattern = "\\)$", replacement = "")
+  deps <- deps[vapply(deps, function(x) length(x) != 0, FUN.VALUE = logical(1))]
   res <- data.frame(
     stringsAsFactors = FALSE,
     type = if (length(deps)) type else character(),
@@ -103,7 +104,7 @@ parse_deps <- function(type, deps) {
     version = vapply(deps, "[", "", 2)
   )
   res$version <- gsub("\\s+", " ", res$version)
-  res$version [ is.na(res$version) ] <- "*"
+  res$version[is.na(res$version)] <- "*"
   res
 }
 
diff --git a/R/str.R b/R/str.R
index d24ac93c..a4ad597f 100644
--- a/R/str.R
+++ b/R/str.R
@@ -61,8 +61,8 @@ format.DescriptionField <- function(x, ..., width = 75) {
 
 format.DescriptionDependencyList <- function(x, ...) {
   paste0(
-    cli::col_blue(x$key), ":\n",
-    paste0(
+    cli::col_blue(x$key), if (nzchar(x$value)) ":\n" else ":",
+    if (nzchar(x$value)) paste0(
       "    ",
       sort(str_trim(strsplit(color_bad(x), ",", fixed = TRUE)[[1]])),
       collapse = ",\n"
diff --git a/tests/testthat/test-deps.R b/tests/testthat/test-deps.R
index 313c62ac..c5b106d4 100644
--- a/tests/testthat/test-deps.R
+++ b/tests/testthat/test-deps.R
@@ -234,3 +234,19 @@ test_that("extra whitespace is removed from deps, but kept in raw data", {
     fixed = TRUE
   )
 })
+
+test_that("empty fields are accepted during normalization", {
+
+  x <- desc("!new")
+  x$set("Depends", "")
+  x$normalize()
+  expect_equal(x$get("Depends"), c(Depends = ""))
+
+  file <- tempfile("desc-")
+  on.exit(unlink(file), add = TRUE)
+  x$write(file)
+  d <- desc(file)
+
+  expect_equal(d$get("Depends"), c(Depends = ""))
+
+})