I prefer to avoid BLANK()
entirely. It’s easy enough to check for an empty field by just using the field reference:
IF({Field Name}, ...
Except for fields containing numeric values, that will return true for any non-empty field, and false for any empty field. For numeric fields, use this:
IF({Field Name} & "", ...
That will convert the field contents to a string, where a non-empty string is equivalent to true, and an empty string equates to false.