Sometimes, you need to check if a list is empty before you start looping through it. But is you just want to show when a list doesn't have any objects, then this {% empty %} is the way to go :-D
<div class="articles">
{% for article in articles %}
{% include 'partials/article.html' %}
{% empty %}
<p>No articles here...</p>
{% endfor %}
</div>