JJs is starting a movement to stop writers from using “jaw-dropping” Perhaps you have noticed that this adjective has taken over Internet story headlines.

• Jaw-dropping prices
• Jaw-dropping look at Angelina Jolie’s Malibu Manion
• Jaw-dropping revelations
• The campaign raised a jaw-dropping $5 million

Writers use the term to manipulate us into clicking on their link. Often, people make money based on the number of hits they get, and they resort to tricky, snappy headlines to draw us in. Jaw-dropping was once a nice term; however, jaw-dropping will lose all relevance as readers discover that a headline that promises jaw-dropping information or photos is nothing special. Think about those roadside attractions that promise the Biggest Grizzly on Earth, World’s Largest Brick or World’s Largest Santa. If you start out in life falling for the gimmicks, you soon learn your lesson and drive past.

I propose that we drop jaw-dropping from the dictionary. Ban it from use. Why not? The dictionary offers many delightful synonyms. The word means amazing or causing great astonishment, so why not the following stunning alternatives:

• ravishing, remarkable dazzling, spectacular, striking, beauteous
• amazing, astonishing, astounding, blindsiding, dumbfounding
• eye-opening, flabbergasting, jarring, jolting, shocking
• startling, stunning, stupefying.

Revamped headlines would look like this:

• Jolting new revelations about candidates live’s
• Shocking control of donor elites over election cycle
• A look at Angelina Jolie’s Stunning Home
• Flabbergasting quotes from Bob Dylan’s lyrics

While we are at it, JJs wants to also ban jaw-dropping’s close cousin: eye-popping. All that public jaw-dropping and eye-popping is an example of bad manners, not to mention painful at my age.