The extended matching items questions are becoming more popular for dental assessments and lend themselves well to clinical dental situations. You are usually presented with an overarching theme for the question set and then a list of 10–15 options from which you have to choose your an­swers. There is then a short lead-in statement followed by the stems; a set of questions, often clinical vignettes, for which you are asked to select, in your opinion, the one best response from the aforementioned list. For example, the list may be causes of dental pain (Necrotising Gingivitis, revers­ible pulpitis, irreversible pulpitis, and so on), and the clinical vignettes describe signs and symptoms for which there is ONE BEST ANSWER to select from the list. Occasionally, you may be asked to select two answers from the list or more than one answer may be appropriate for one question. As with any type of assessment, it is crucial that you read the instructions for the question before attempting to answer so that you know exactly what you are being asked to do. EMIs are notoriously time-consuming and difficult to write and are usually as challenging for the examiners to write as they are for the candidates to answer! One of the more common pitfalls when writing these questions is for the list of poten­tial options to comprise heterogeneous, unrelated items, for example five causes of dental pain, three partial denture components, two drugs used for sedation and two periodon­tal diagnoses. If the vignette is based on dental sedation then you only have to choose from the two drugs rather than the other options that are simply irrelevant. These questions tend not to be negatively marked so you would then have a 50–50 chance of being right should you need to guess!