In any case, it was a surprising and startlingly effective performance - animated, anecdotal, humane.

Dirty pool, but startlingly effective.

The industrial-chic-meets-marble clash is startlingly effective.

Done right, it's a startlingly effective move, whether you're on the giving or receiving end.

Famed theater critic Elliot Norton called his performance as Belyayev "startlingly effective."

"How dare you--" The security agents who'd escorted Shahdi to safety produced handcuffs and startlingly effective grins.

But even with Mr. Sanders's melodramatic delivery, the poem proved startlingly effective when thrust together with Bach's Chaconne.

The shorts are startlingly effective.

Although it is a newcomer to New York politics, the Coalition proved startlingly effective, distributing more than 100,000 voters' guides, many of them through the Catholic church.

What eventually spilled over into mannerism was, in the 50's, startlingly effective; what has caused discomfort vocally these last two decades was but a hint then.