Abstract. The need for efficient personality inventories has led to the wide use of short instruments. The corresponding items often contain multiple, potentially conflicting descriptors within one item. In Study 1 ( N = 198 university students), the reliability and validity of the TIPI (Ten-Item Personality Inventory) was compared with the reliability and validity of a modified TIPI based on items that rephrased each two-descriptor item into two single-descriptor items. In Study 2 ( N = 268 university students), we administered the BFI-10 (Big Five Inventory short version) and a similarly modified version of the BFI-10 without two-descriptor items. In both studies, reliability and construct validity values occasionally improved for separated multi-descriptor items. The inventories with multi-descriptor items showed shortcomings in some factors of the TIPI and the BFI-10. However, the other scales worked comparably well in the original and modified inventories. The limitations of short personality inventories with multi-descriptor items are discussed.